Venturers Vs Broughton Gifford, Wednesday June 26th

Broughton Gifford 97-9, Venturers 98-3

This was a very solid performance, but after the first few overs it didn’t look very good. Steve had lost the toss and we were fielding. Steve wasn’t actually the captain, but they had all arrived before some of us had so he agreed to do the toss anyway. Then we had a short discussion about who should be captain. The obvious candidates were Matt R and Gregory, both of whom are not keen, but Imran showed insufficient reluctance when the subject was raised and found himself doing the job. His first act was to ask himself to open the bowling. Any other captain would probably have asked him to do that too. He was a bit wayward, though, and was firmly pulled a couple of times by the rather competent-looking opener. At the other end, Matt S, a touch quicker, was bowling up the hill (perhaps not optimal) and got the same treatment. But Matt also got an outside edge from the other opener, who was actually Chris Middup, which travelled low in the direction of slip. There was one, but it would not have carried to him; nor, of course, would he have caught it if it had. Instead, Josh, wearing the new wicket-keeping inners, caught it spendidly in his right hand. Three balls later he got some glove on another edge, but he needed either more glove, so as to catch it himself, or less, so as to deflect it to slip. As it was the ball ballooned up and landed in front of him, not going high enough for him to find it in time or for anybody else to get near.

The reprieved batsman was soon run out by his partner’s calling and George’s direct hit. Imran took himself and Matt off and tried Chandrabhan and Muhammad Fahad. Muhammad proved expensive at first, but Chandrabhan did not. He also removed BG’s usual Sunday captain, who can definitely bat, with a low full toss that he clipped to short cover, a good catch by George and probably the worst ball that Chandrabhan bowled. Muhammad started to get the line right and not feed the pull, but the run rate was still a bit high considering the very slow outfield. The new batsman was more defensively minded, or simply had his hands full keeping Chandrabhan out, and that slowed them a bit. They slowed a lot more when we tried spin. Gregory removed the more defensive batsman almost immediately by offering him something to try to hit and inducing a very easy catch for Steve. This seemed like a mistake to begin with as the next batsman was more versatile, but both batsmen found the turning ball hard to get away. Chandrabhan did not offer much more, and in due course the pressure led to a second run-out. A quick direct hit by Steve would have been enough anyway, but instead he spotted that the non-striker had hesitated, and used the time to make sure by returning the ball calmly and securely to Josh.

Then George took over from Chandrabhan and demolished most of the rest of the batting with three wickets in four balls, all bowled by sharply spun and slightly skiddy straight balls. Abdul, who plays for us occasionally, survived and for a while made a decent job of giving the strike to his partner, the still surviving opener. So late in the innings, though, he had to do something himself, so he attacked Imran and gave Gregory a catch. We didn’t get the last wicket. The opener nearly ran the number 11 out – if he had, he would have carried his bat, but that’s less good if you have run three of your partners out – but George and Imran, the latter bowling better now than he had earlier, kept them very quiet.

Chasing 98 to win on a slow pitch with a slow outfield can be awkward. Lose a couple of wickets and fall behind the rate, and you think you have to hit boundaries: overhit, and you lose more wickets. There are a lot of mistakes to be made. One was made off the very first ball, fortunately by the umpire (Gregory) who signalled a leg bye as a wide, convinced that it had hit the keeper’s pads rather than Ian G’s. The just aggrieved bowler (Abdul) and the puzzled batsmen corrected him. Ian and Matt R made none of the obvious mistakes. They did fall behind the rate, but they simply went on calmly collecting singles and waiting for a bad ball. It was a while before there were any, but the singles began to mount up.

Broughton Gifford changed the bowling a lot. It wasn’t clear whether the idea was to avoid the batsmen settling (Imran had done this early in their innings) or just to give everybody except Chris Middup a bowl. If the latter, it was a success. Otherwise not. Their bowling was more uneven than ours had been, so the effect of changing it was to relieve pressure. There were still few boundaries, but more twos and, on one occasion, an all-run four. At the half-way point we had reached 52, which was exactly what they had had at the same stage; but they had lost three wickets by then. We had two well set batsmen, and not long afterwards a ten-wicket win seemed imaginable. Then Matt scooped a catch to the wicket-keeper off one that would have bounced a second time if he had let it (some thought he had, which would make it a no-ball) and Steve and Ian immediately contrived a run-out. James P came and went. Could we collapse? Ian, belted a couple of fours to put the matter beyond much doubt and then attempted to retire. Imran forbade him, probably more out of nervousness than because he was on

1. By now Ian was batting like a man trying to get out, and the bowling had become very erratic. Ian played a ball to slip, and started to do some ostentatious gardening without returning to his ground first. The slip fieldsman watched in a confused way, and then lobbed the ball into the stumps. Was Ian really trying to get out, or being absentminded? Josh swiped powerfully at his first ball, making only enough contact to avoid being bowled, and Chandrabhan got the necessary couple of runs next ball. Imran’s last act as captain was to order himself to collect the match fees.