Poplars Wingfield Vs Venturers, Wednesday July 3rd

Poplars 132-6, Venturers 127-6

It takes a long time to get to Poplars, Wingfield, mainly because of the queues that form at the traffic lights half a mile away. By the time we arrived, the locals were already hard at work boardig up the windows, like a Louisiana resident who has spotted something threatening out in the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe they had been warned about our batsmen, or more realistically about our bowlers. Sixes are forbidden on this tiny ground in the pub garden, but involuntary ones sometimes happen.

Ollie took an excellent return catch in his second over, but off a no-ball, clearly and promptly called, for overstepping. Jamie removed the other opener through a very sharp catch by Matt S at point, and bowled the other. After that, wickets fell and the ball got lost in the hedge at about equal intervals. At one point it also got lost in the scoreboard. We caught our catches – Gregory got a fingertip to one that somebody with quicker reactions might have caught – but our ground fielding was less efficient. Apart from the usual reasons (incompetence, dozing off) there was also some difficulty with the ground itself, which is uneven: if you know it, you can anticipate the bounce, but visitors get surprised. There is a tree in the playing area, which saved us two runs, and a mound in front of the entrance to the pub. The mound cost us runs when Muhammad, running round to make a routine stop, fell off it, but it also saved us runs when a half-stopped ball ran up it, turned left, trundled along parallel to the boundary for a short distance, and then trickled back down towards the wicket. The bowling figures are very approximate: James R was credited with a wicket in his third over but only bowled two, and Muhammad was not as economical, nor Gregory as expensive, as the book claims. But we agree that they made 132-6.

That’s quite a few to chase, even on a small ground, and their opening bowlers gave nothing away. Jaideep and Jamie were patient, perhaps a little too patient. After a while Poplars started to rotate the bowlers a bit, and eventually brought on a woman who was addressed by her teammates as Chucky. This can’t have been a dig at her bowling action, which was perfectly orthodox, but she did send rather a lot down the leg side, though on a decent length. When she got one straight, Jamie swept and missed. Ian G picked out square leg. Steve got a good ball at the other end. Jaideep, as non-striker, waited until mid-on had picked the ball up, then set off for a run and had got about a third of the way down the pitch by the time it was returned to the bowler. His partner, Matt, signalled wildly for him to go back but couldn’t do much else. Duncan also got a good one, from an occasional bowler. It was left to Matt and James R to provide us with some chance. A couple of overs from the end James was less ridiculously run out, but Ollie carried on in the same style and we needed about thirteen off the last over. We didn’t find the boundaries we needed, and at the end Ollie, who could have tied the match with a suicidal six, managed only a single.

The hosts provided us with chips in quantity, accompanied by some form of dead animal, and we spent a pleasant forty minutes or so with them before the time came to push Ian G’s car, which has no reverse gear, out of its parking space and go home.