Venturers Vs Rowlands Castle, Sunday July 11th

Rowlands Castle 84-6, Venturers 85-6

It is probably fair to say that we were reasonably generous hosts. Not in the matter of tea, which remains an impossibility for several reasons, but in turning out at all on a day dedicated to football and to tennis; in playing on in the pouring rain; in dropping catches (there were four of these, two easy and two difficult), missing runouts and stumpings (two of each, one easy and one difficult in each case); and getting out in silly ways. We did, nevertheless, win.

This wasn’t quite the usual Venturers team. On Tuesday we had six. By Friday we still had six, and even Ritvij couldn’t be persuaded to join in. But then the Star’s match collapsed, so we put together a combined team, six of us and five of them. On Sunday morning two of the Star’s players got pinged by Track and Trace, but our opponents had brought thirteen so that didn’t matter. Two of them turned out to have brought no kit: one of those played, for them, regardless, but the other sat in the van and watched through the windscreen, and was thus the only dry person left after half an hour.

We agreed to play 25 overs each way, reduced from the planned 30, because of the threat of rain starting around 3:30. We bowled the first ball at 1:20, and it was raining firmly before the over ended. It never really stopped, but it wasn’t until about twenty overs in that we had to think about giving up: then it let up enough to finish their innnings, and after that it seemed silly to stop, although it also seemed silly to carry on.

Mark, from the Star, strayed to leg occasionally but mostly bowled well; CB began with a wild full toss with the already wet new ball, but bowled very well after that. Both openers looked competent, but the outfield was slow and large, and scoring was difficult. One of them, the one who hadn’t brought his kit, gave Jaideep a difficult chance and the other gave Gregory an easy one, but they were otherwise fairly untroubled until the kitless one was bowled by CB. The new batsman took a more violent approach than his build suggested, and gave Farooq an easy catch and Gregory a difficult one. Then, off the first ball of the seventeenth over, he committed himself to the front foot too early: Gregory shortened his length and the resulting catch fortunately went to Simon. With that, the scoring stopped almost entirely. The new batsman was unable to do a thing at Gregory’s end and the opener was already finding Farooq difficult and now found him impossible. The rain grew heavy; after a brief discussion it was decided to continue. Harjeet bowled three accurate overs, gave away almost nothing, fluffed a run-out and picked up one wicket with a slower ball; at the other end, all attempts to hit Bruce failed totally. Most of the time they couldn’t get him off the pitch, never mind the square, and two of them, including the opener, got bowled in undignified ways. The last ten overs yielded sixteen runs.

Jaideep miscued to point in the first over. Farooq got torpedoed by the first legitimate ball of the second, after another wet-ball no-ball. We were well on the way to messing up. Mark and Chris (the Star’s very welcome wicket-keeper) got us back on track with some very aggressive running, which included an all-run four without overthrows. Then Mark got a good ball and CB was preposterously run out by his partner. Simon was less than fluent but he and Chris ran hard and got us to within twenty runs before Simon gave an easy catch to fine leg. After that had also been dropped he became a bit more nervous but with only a dozen to get and the one really threatening, but ultimately ineffective, bowler out of overs, there seemed little to go wrong. Then Simon played across a harmless straight ball: height was the issue, but it was hard to see how anything could bounce over the stumps from a slow bowler on the mud we were but now playing on. Harjeet looked minded to finish it quickly but played back instead of forward and was even more clearly leg before. We were left with the thirteenth visitor, Drav, playing for us, Bruce, and Gregory. As often happens, though, the loaned player had the advantage of knowing what to expect of his usual teammates. He swung at anything that wasn’t straight. We suspected that he might have swung at anything that was straight too, but they didn’t test that. He survived the over. We needed nine. Chris hit a two and then, perhaps thinking there were enough wickets left, a single: next ball Drav connected and gave him the strike back. The last ball Chris hit hard enough to send it for four, even through the water; and after a couple of misses, Drav connected again and we all ran off through the downpour.