Venturers Vs Combe Down, Wednesday June 2nd

Combe Down 153-3, Venturers 101-4

Exactly a month later, we played again. We were all rusty, as if we had been left outside in the May rain. Imran wisely anointed himself with WD40, hyssop, etc., and arrived slightly late, but bowled very smoothly and accurately. One opener’s ill-advised attempt to attack him resulted in a catch for Ritvij, not entirely a straightforward one. We were on the first and now only pitch at Sulis, where we last played twenty-two months ago: last year there was no cricket at Sulis at all, but the reduction to a single square had been intended for 2020 all along and is not related to the pandemic. Some minor improvements have been carried out. There is a scoreboard that works and the scorebox is no longer about to fall down. Other things have not changed. The main building is sealed, the clock shows five to seven (a feature commented on as permanent in the first Venturers match report, in April 2004) and the artificial pitch, which has never been usable in living memory, is still there, partly overgrown like an abandoned railway siding. Therefore Ritvij had to avoid landing on it after taking his catch.

Dan did not play last year and had not played before today this year, so he was the rustiest of us all. The batsmen took advantage: one of them landed the ball on the roof above the stopped clock, where it remained despite the slope. Fours were harder to hit because the grass had grown luxuriantly in the wet, and resembled a lockdown hairstyle. Alex and Jamie were a bit more accurate and harder to hit than Dan. Gregory’s first over was on paper an improvement even on Imran, but its economy owed much to fielding, and its two wickets owed almost everything to poor shots and the rest to Jamie’s good catch in the deep. Thereafter Gregory bowled much better, with worse results, as Alex had been doing all along.

The opener, dropped at long-on, retired on reaching fifty: he was told that he could carry on and replied “not interested”. It made no difference. Bruce bowled two almost unhittable overs at the end, but only after starting off with two very hittable no-balls and a wide, so that at one stage his figures were 0.0-0-9-0.

We needed 154, which seemed out of reach unless Jamie or Ritvij got going. Jamie hit the third legitimate ball he faced into cover’s hands: Ritvij followed his hundred in the previous match with a first-baller here, in exactly the same way. We were sunk. Jaideep and Ian played well but with the slow outfield aggressive running was needed, and Jaideep is not able to do that. Eventually Jaideep mistimed one and gave a catch. Rob did not lay bat on ball for some while, but he didn’t get out. Ian could not find a safe way to force the pace either. A couple of catches went down, one to the bowler when Rob at last middled one: the ball bounced towards the stumps and Ian, who had narrowly survived a direct hit a few balls earlier, watched from a great distance as it somehow spun past them. Two balls later Rob got an inside edge onto his pad and also watched as the ball somehow spun past the stumps, at the other end. After that, though, both batsmen managed some level of fluency and it was a surprise when Rob presented the opening batsman with his third catch. Simon came out to the nonstriker’s end for one ball: Ian scored two from it to get us into three figures and some degree of respectability.