Venturers Vs Southstoke, Wednesday April 27th

Venturers 115-6, Southstoke 87-6

An immediate rematch of last Sunday’s game hadn’t been the original plan, but nobody minded. On the other hand, nobody wanted to open the batting. Imran eventually managed to persuade Steve and Hugh to do it, and Hugh got bowled quickly. That was about as good as it got for Southstoke, though. Krish and Steve built a useful partnership which should have ended when Steve gave a simple catch to cover, and ended the next ball when he did it again. Farooq injected some urgency, and after Krish got trapped in the crease again, and Alex got bowled, Sanay gave him good support. Sanay looked very capable when he defended, and much less so when he tried to play shots himself: this may have had more to do with the slow pitch than anything else. It certainly wasn’t easy to score quickly. Eventually Sanay missed: Saad also struggled with the lack of pace for a bit, but picked up speed and, after Farooq also miscued to cover, he and Imran got us to 115: the third team score of 115 in the three matches so far.

It was already getting dark by the time we started fielding. We had lost some time to odd minor delays (bootlaces, scorers not paying attention) but it wasn’t really late, just gloomy. And cold. Several people wore coats. Saad wore a grey outfit not really appropriate for a cricket field at all, but with adequate insulation: moreover cricketers, like cats, are grey in the dark anyway. Abhijeet bowled one opener immediately, and he and Sanay gave little away. Scoring was in ones and twos, unsurprising given the long boundaries and long grass, but also a reflection of the bowling. The appearence of a spinner was too much for the number three, who immediately charged Gregory and got bowled. His successor did the same thing two overs later: both times the non-striker said “bad luck”, although it was plainly bad batting. At this point Gregory had taken seven Southstoke wickets this year for twenty-two runs, and so when his legs froze, or something, and he became unable to bend to pick the ball up, everybody overlooked his uselessness. Oddly, it didn’t affect his bowling. His next two overs did restore the balance a bit, but by now it was so dark as to make it difficult for the fielders to see the ball. Farooq clearly failed to notice the rather simple catch that came his way, Gregory himself did not try to reach a slightly harder one that he also hadn’t seen. At the other end, Imran, economical as only an economist can be, also had at least one catch dropped. Maybe more. We couldn’t see, either. Saad bowled one over but after that we had to slow it down for safety: Bruce, and Farooq and Krish bowling spin, finished off. Southstoke found a white ball to use for the last few overs, but the sightscreen was still white so that made it harder for the batters. There was no threat to the result, especially after the remaining opener got stumped by Hugh and the new batter ran two of his partners out, by a huge distance both times.