Venturers Vs Star, Wednesday July 10th

The Star 105-8, Venturers 65-8

We did quite well with the ball. Harjeet, The Star’s answer to Pooh-Bah but without the pomposity, attacked Dan early and gave Ashwyn a catch. The next batsman, known to be dangerous, was immediately cleaned up by James. Number 4 was Mark, another well-known opponent who is very similar to Harjeet in that he is an organiser and a very competent player. He fell very quickly in the most extraordinary: another genuine slip catch, with the same bowler (Dan) and catcher (Gregory) as our previous one, a couple of months ago. We’ve probably missed about six in the meantime. After that things got a bit calmer and the next breakthrough was given to us by an arbitrary self-imposed retirement rule applied to themselves by The Star. As one of the retirees made 23 and another 28 we didn’t quite work out what it was: retire when Harjeet was getting bored of watching you bat, perhaps. There was one more batsman who made a few, before wandering down the wicket to Gregory and being rather classically stumped by Josh: then Ashwyn, Imran and Bruce finished things off, with Josh getting a second stumping and a catch off Bruce. The last pair did get a few, though.

Unfortunately we never got started with the bat. Only Simon, with a rather slow 23 not out, improved on Ashwyn’s five. Fifteen wides gave us a hand, but that was after Mark had bowled Ashwyn and Muhammad and trapped Josh, who had walked across more than he should have done, leg before. after eight overs, our score was 18-5. We didn’t really bat all that badly, in the sense that none of the wickets fell to outstandingly stupid shots. The problem was that nobody played any shots successfully, and apart from Simon few stayed long enough to try. James did bat for six overs, making four, and Dan and Bruce were also obstructive, but by then it was too late.