Broughton Gifford Vs Venturers, Sunday August 1st

Broughton Gifford 274-4 Venturers 120-8

We did end up with eleven players, though estimates of our numbers varied from seven to thirteen. Imran texted Jaideep to say that he wouldn’t be coming and that the match would be rained off anyway. It took a while to sort out the confusion that this caused, because Simon was almost the last to arrive and he knew, which the rest of us did not, that Imran wasn’t supposed to be playing anyway.

Imran was wrong. The groundsman at Broughton Gifford, Mark, is also often the captain and, against stiff competition, most enthusiastic player. His view is that cricket pitches are for playing cricket on, and it takes a lot to stop him. A Kerala downpour (Jaideep’s description of the morning’s weather) is not enough. It did delay us a bit, though, and we agreed to play 35 overs.

Broughton Gifford’s wicketkeeper and opening batsman, Rob, was beaten three times in CB’s first over, blocked two and hit the last one over the road into the long grass. This was typical of what followed. At the other end, Duncan played sensibly back to a straight ball from Bob (one of several players lent to us by Bathford): it did not bounce at all and we wondered how anybody was going to make any runs.

For a few more overs the question was still open. Rob pushed the ball around for the time being, but his new partner hit one into the grass as well: thus encouraged, he tried to do it again and was well caught by Simon.

At this point Rob was joined by Rob, and between them they took the game away from us conclusively. Apart from a period when we managed to keep Rob off strike and let Gregory bowl to Rob, whom he kept quiet, we leaked runs fast. Usually that happened when we bowled full tosses to Rob, who is enterprising, capable and strong enough to get underneath them and send them off to Chippenham or Melksham. But bowling short to Rob led to similar results, and bowling short to Rob wasn’t much better. Against Rob, in particular, we never really had a chance: he did almost get stumped at one point, but by that time he had 96. Rob, on the other hand, did look as if he might get out, but actually never gave any kind of chance.

We had agreed “no retirements unless you want to” but once he had a hundred Rob had had enough. That didn’t slow things much. It might have done if we hadn’t dropped the new batsman three times in one over from Bruce. The culprits were Simon (awkward one on the boundary, but he fell over and it went for six), Gregory (slightly awkward low catch at cover, barely got a hand on it) and CB (sitter). In his next over Bruce dropped the same batsman himself. John, another Bathford ringer, ended the nonsense by bowling him: Mark made a brisk 16 before going the same way; and Jos at seven swung his way to 38 very quickly, hindered slightly by his partner’s penchant for short runs. When the innings ended Rob was 42 not out, out of 247 scored while he was at the wicket.

This was clearly out of reach. The side CB had played for the day before had successfully chased 274, but they had had ten more overs to do it in. We needed big runs from Ian or CB: nobody else would be likely to score fast enough on their own. Charlie and Jaideep began cautiously, and Charlie fell to an excellent slip catch. Ian edged to the wicketkeeper early on. The only substantial stand was between Jaideep and CB. They survived various exotic dangers: prominent among these were the leg-spin of Emma, which doesn’t always land but is hugely confusing when it does, and the lethal throwing arm of Jack, the extremely small son of the wicketkeeping Rob. Jack appeared briefly as a substitute and then permanently as a replacement for the other Rob, who had had a diary malfunction. We should know about his arm, because last year he ran CB out with a direct hit, but that didn’t stop Jaideep trying to sneak a single to him. Fortunately he threw to the keeper’s gloves this time: another direct hit would have been out. CB put Emma into the road a couple of times and then gave her a gully catch from the other end, attempted something ambitious. She caught it and fell over. After that we fell apart. Simon was pinged on the glove and slip ran round to catch the wicket-keeper’s deflection. Jaideep got to fifty and added a five, because this time they forgot about Jack’s arm, and didn’t back up adequately. Jaideep then edged to the keeper, a good one-handed catch: he had earlier been dropped once and saved from being leg before to Emma by an inside edge, but was the only one of us who didn’t look likely to get out at any moment. John miscued, Bob lofted Emma to a great height but insufficient distance, Bruce fell over and was stumped, and Steve and Stu merely ensured that Gregory didn’t have to bat.