Venturers Vs Combe Down, Sunday July 7th

Venturers 147, Combe Down 109

Simon wasn’t there. This had an immediate effect: Jamie agreed to the Combe Down suggestion that they should field first. We wondered about shortening the rather long painted boundaries, and decided against, which was a mistake really. It was a hot day, and drinks were provided frequently.

Ritvij and Jaideep opened, and immediately had a family disagreement about a second run. Ritvij, who wanted it, was right from a cricket point of view, but Jaideep’s legs overruled him. As Ritvij lacked the muscle to reach the long boundaries, that meant scoring in singles only. They had run six of them in six overs, when Ritvij, rather surprisingly, overbalanced while playing a defensive shot and got stumped. Jamie did manage to reach the boundaries, and Jaideep twice managed to run two, or rather run one and walk a second when three would normally have been available. In due course he was run out, but as the result of a mix-up rather than overambition. Jamie should have been the victim really, but the fielders fumbled and there was time for Jaideep to limp past him and surrender his own wicket instead. If he hadn’t been limping he would probably have survived, even though at one point the ball was in point’s hand and both batsmen were at the striker’s end. By that time he had made fourteen (twelve singles and a two), Jamie had 41 (a six, six fours, a two and nine singles) and the score was 63. Matt followed very quickly, deceived by a legbreak, but Adi and later James provided considerable resistance and support for Jamie, though only a handful of runs each themselves.

To counter this, Combe Down tried using smaller and smaller bowlers, eventually giving three overs to a ten-year-old Australian who happened to be visiting and had been roped in to play for them. He had already demonstrated competent fielding technique and a decent throwing arm, but we were slightly generous in the matter of wides at this point, After his second over we informed him that he was bowling too well to need such generosity, and his third over was delivered with such accuracy that five out of the six balls would have hit the stumps. Then his father took over and bowled Jamie, who hit over the top of one that maybe kept a little low, but probably wasn’t short enough to pull in the first place. In his next over he bowled James, a little more conventionally. Ashley (run out by Muhammad’s late call), Ian and Bruce also contributed a handful each: Muhammad himself did slightly better, and ran Gregory out as well by calling him for a non-existent but logical second off the last possible ball.

Combe Down also lost an opener early, bowled by an excellent ball from Jamie, and also built a substantial second-wicket partnership. The opener who survived to be part of that was the senior Australian. Without being remotely, um, abrasive, he was quite aggressive as a batsman, and very bottom-handed: after ten overs he lofted Ian towards mid-on, where Jamie tumbled forward and made a complete mess of the catch, damaging his right hand in the process. He went off for repairs, and Gregory reluctantly captained for a bit. Jamie had taken himself off by then, and told Ian to have one more over, so the first decision apart from field placings was going to be who should replace Ian. Before we quite got that far, Jamie appeared at the boundary, evidently willing to resume at the end of Matt’s over; and then Ritvij, who was keeping wicket and had done it well (standing up to Ian), damaged his right hand too. Ashley agreed to take over; Ritvij left; and Jamie rejoined us and revealed that his intended new bowler had been Ashley, now busy putting pads on. Gregory’s intention, in the absence of instructions, had been to have a bowl himself on the grounds that it was time for some spin, and Jamie acceded to this. The immediate effect was a minor flurry of runs, at both ends. Then the non-Australian got into a complete tangle playing a sharply turning off-break, which rebounded off his pads and rolled into the stumps. The bails did not fall, or even light up; but he was out lbw anyway. Four balls later, the Australian missed a scoop across the line, and was bowled by one that bounced a second time just before hitting the stumps. This is all right as long as the second bounce is after the popping crease, but in any case there was some pad on that one as well.

That proved to be the end of any prospect of them getting the runs. They played Gregory with great respect for the rest of his spell. Adi also began with a slightly expensive over, so they attacked him, gave James a catch and thereafter treated him with great respect as well. The required run rate rose rapidly. Adi produced a splendid yorker that accounted for the last batsman who posed any threat: at the other end, a man in a Peaky Blinders cap played very solidly while the innings crumbled around him to more yorkers from Adi. When Gregory ran out of overs and Adi was felt to have reached his limit (a pity, as he had four wickets), they were obliged to attack Bruce. This usually only works for a short while: if it did happen to keep working, we had two overs of Ian in reserve if we needed them. In the event the tailender hit Bruce for four and fell over when he tried to do it again. Bruce’s accuracy spared Ashley the bother of stumping him. The last pair – the smallest Australian was deemed too small to bat – resisted for a while, until the Peaky Blinder tried to turn a straight ball from James to leg, and missed it.