Hillesley Vs Venturers, Sunday May 15th

Hillesley 169-4, Venturers 170-8

To get the best out of this one you really had to be a hippopotamus. None of us quite has the physique for that, so we just got wetter and wetter. Even Bhargab stopped complaining about how soft everything was.

We thought during the morning that the match would be off, but the rain stopped so we set off, and a decision was made to play at 2 o’clock, half an hour late, if there was no more rain. There wasn’t, and we managed to get the cover off the pitch without spilling everything, so we went ahead, reducing the match to thirty overs each. It was raining again by the third over. Hillesley made steady progress against Krish (consistent) and Yash (inconsistent) but did not run away. Gregory was tried and immediately produced two full tosses, only one attributable to the wet ball, but the rest of his spell was dull. Krish bowled the left-handed opener. The new batsman seemed more capable than the rest, or maybe just more waterproof, and they got after Divyaakshar to some extent: wrist spin on a sodden pitch with a wet ball is a fairly hopeless enterprise. Dan struggled with his footing but Varun eventually removed both the other opener and the waterproof batsman. The rest did not have the power to do much under these conditions. One of them escaped once, when he should have been given run out because of not grounding his bat. Possibly the umpire did not have a clear view, or maybe the bat reached the surface of the water but not the lake bed. Later we did run him out. Bhargab thought he had caught the other batter off Liam, but even our opinions about what had happened exactly weren’t all the same. Anyway, if he had got out he wouldn’t have been able to embarrass himself and amuse his teammates by playing a maiden in the last over of the innings, bowled by Yash. He made contact with only two of the balls, both times hitting it straight to a fielder, and there was a bye off the last ball.

Looking at the team sheet, Krish had said that everybody could bat, but that clearly wasn’t true. In fact, six people could bat, and the other five can’t. Liam at seven was a bit worrying. Jaideep hit the first ball of the innings for four, and there were no more runs off the bat for the next four overs. Then Jaideep hit an on-drive, hard but slightly uppish: the fielders chorused “catch it!” in tones that meant “we know you won’t”. Mid-on channelled his inner hippopotamus: he dived all at once, with an ear-splitting splosh, and did catch it. Ritvij hit a couple of fours, and found that he could actually time the ball, and Krish ran ones and, once he had worked out a method of turning round without capsizing, twos, as he usually does. We were making decent progress until Krish got bowled by the harmless slow bowler who had come on.

Bhargab and Ritvij were now together. We would win – assuming the rain didn’t get even worse – if they both made runs, and might well win if one of them did. Bhargab is a slow starter and it was Ritvij who dominated the scoring, including a six into the children’s playground (there was nobody there: it was raining again); but his next attempt to do that did not go far enough. Bhargab was dropped at fine leg off the harmless slow bowler: an easy catch, and you mustn’t drop Bhargab. Yash stayed with Bhargab for a while but then missed the perhaps not so harmless after all slow bowler. Varun edged to the keeper. Liam seemed bewildered by the bowling or perhaps by the rain, but lasted for long enough for Bhargab to make significant progress before he wandered and got stumped. Divyaakshar looked more confident and showed signs of contributing himself, but he got a good ball. Dan kept out a few, and Bhargab went briefly beserk at the other end. We needed twelve: Bhargab decided that he could trust Dan for an over. But Dan started to worry about being still on nought, which of course didn’t matter in the least, and tried to hit a straight ball instead of just blocking it as he was supposed to. Now there was a significant danger of Bhargab getting stranded. Bruce, though, was not going to make the same mistake. He blocked the rest of the over. Bhargab hit a six, then accepted a single and Bruce blocked again. The next over was tight: Bhargab took no risks, even though we were now so close that we might even have won without him, and accepted a single off the fourth ball. Bruce blocked: there was a no-ball as well. Needing three, Bhargab hit the second ball of the next over for four.