Venturers Vs Star, Wednesday June 9th

The Star 137-6, Venturers 97-6

Imran and CB gave us a good start under cloud that had appeared from nowhere at the end of a sunny day. One of the openers, frustrated by tight bowling and by the long boundaries, chanced a third on Jamie’s arm and didn’t realise that he was in danger until too late. They weren’t even his runs. His partner was calmer and just collected what was available. The new batsman miscued Imran towards backward point. Farooq, at gully, called the catch for Rob, trundling up from deepish third man: Gregory, at cover, stopped obediently and Rob didn’t arrive in time. Probably Gregory (nearest, but it was going away from him) should have called for it at once. It made little difference as the batsman was bowled by CB almost immediately. The next to arrive chanced a run on Ritvij’s arm. He also didn’t realise he was in danger until it was too late, and looked surprised to be given out, but Ritvij had hit the stumps before he started hurrying.

The opener retired after a while, on some random score. This happens with the Star. The rule seems to be that you have to retire when Harjeet gets bored watching you. Jamie bowled the new batsman straight away, and took a nippy return catch: Gregory induced a skier to mid-on, which Ritvij caught competently. But both of them, especially Gregory, leaked runs: mostly in twos, which were widely available. It also started raining. Farooq and Bruce didn’t lose control at the end but they didn’t keep things especially tight either, despite another random retirement: near the end, Imran injured himself dropping an awkward catch.

Seven an over is actually quite gettable but as we weren’t going to hit many fours (long grass, long boundaries) we needed to run a lot, and eventually Charlie got run out. Long before that Ritvij had got bowled by a slower ball that he would have blocked in a longer match. CB and Jamie might have got us close if they had stayed together, but Jamie walked across his stumps soon after CB came in. After that, although both Chris and Farooq provided support, CB was having to do most of the scoring himself. He did that rather well, in fact, but it wasn’t going to be enough. When Chris tried to push the score along he chipped a catch to the bowler and when Farooq did he got stumped, but by then it was far too late anyway. CB was out to the last ball, which meant that Simon faced only one ball and Rob neither batted nor bowled: unfortunate, but twenty overs is not long enough for it to be always possible to avoid that.