Venturers Vs Bathford, Wednesday June 5th

Bathford 78-8, Venturers 81-5

Estimates of the number of players Bathford could produce for this match had varied between zero and eight, but when they showed up there were nine of them. We had come prepared and we lent them Duncan, and a fielder when needed. Some of the Bathford players were noticeably young, but they all knew what they were doing.

The opening batsman popped Ian’s first ball in the air, just short of George. He popped the second ball in the air, just over Olly. After that he stopped popping and began to look a bit of a threat. His partner was less erratic but also less dangerous. Oddly, they seemed to find Ian easier to score off than Dan. Pace off the ball had something to do with it, but Ian was having one of his less reliable days, with a few short balls. Dan bowled the quieter opener behind his legs: the new batsman adopted a similar cautious style. We weren’t making much progress, but neither were they.

The switch to Olly and Gregory livened things up a bit. Caution was abandoned at the sight of Gregory’s first ball, slow even by his standards. It did, however, pitch in the right place and turn appreciably, and it finally arrived at the stumps with just about enough momentum to topple the off bail. The very young batsman who followed, with a manner that suggested he was very bored and an alertness that made it clear that he wasn’t, played more sensibly. Josh missed an easy opportunity to stump him by trying to throw the ball at the stumps rather than reach for them, but the next ball he faced he skied Olly to cover. This brought in a competent left-hander, who hit straight and firmly, and also pulled hard when given the chance; but at this point the opener drove loosely and allowed a ball to turn between bat and pad. It missed leg, but Josh, lesson learnt, completed the stumping efficiently. Olly soon bowled the new batsman, and George and Bruce were left to finish off. Bruce, as usual, proved harder to hit than he looks, and the left-hander therefore attacked George without due attention and drove a low catch back to the bowler. Thereafter there was nobody with much in the way of shots. George got another wicket, might have had a genuine slip catch off the penultimate ball if Josh hadn’t deflected it (to be fair, it might not have carried), and then ran from slip to backward point to catch the top edge off Bruce’s last ball.

On a slow pitch, eighty can be defensible. Rob was out early, and Matt and George proceeded carefully, not aiming for the boundary, before George missed one and Steve joined Matt. The slower the bowling the harder it was to hit, and some of the bowling was very slow. Matt would have been happy just to continue at that rate, and indeed doing so would have won us the match, but after surviving two loud but very obviously not out LBW appeals, he succumbed to one that was very quiet but very obviously out. Josh thus joined Steve at the halfway point, with exactly half the runs we needed already scored.

His approach was rather different. He stepped right across to the off side to his first ball and mowed it through square leg. One of the younger players was given a bowl at this point: he didn’t do badly, but his line wavered and that gave Josh space to attack. He was replaced by the bored-looking player, who had already shown calm fielding and an accurate arm, but he too had some difficulties, perhaps getting used to bowling up the slope. He was slightly unlucky once or twice, including one when a shot was found to have come to rest actually on the boundary line, gaining us two rather fortunate runs. With 17 runs needed, Josh holed out and Olly, having looked solid, popped a catch giving a debut wicket to the young bowler. By then we needed only a handful of runs which Simon got, leaving Steve unbeaten at the other end.