Poplars Vs Venturers, Wednesday June 22th

Venturers 106, Poplars 107-6

This was less close than it looks on paper. For one thing, there is a six-and-out rule at Poplars, to avoid damage to the pub, and three of them got out that way. One did so while hitting the winning runs, which led to a debate about whether he was out or not. Local opinion, which is definitive, was that he was out, but that raises the possibility that you could win a match by 0 wickets.

Two others from their side got out that way, one of them first ball. The bowler in both of those cases was Sushil and there was perhaps something deliberate about it, but he doesn’t get credit for the wicket: it is treated as retired out.

We made a decent start but only Ritvij got much of a score. He also fell to the six-and-out rule. He would have cleared the pub if he hadn’t picked the line of the chimney and the attached satellite dish, which made a noise like dropped china but didn’t seem to be damaged in any way. It didn’t make much difference, though, because he had 46 with the six for that shot, and there was a retire-at-50 convention in force. Charlie chased a wide one after a decent start: Krish, batting with a pulled muscle, picked out mid-on. (“I don’t think I’ve seen her take a catch before”, said a spectator, but she never looked as if she was going to drop it.) Nobody else got anything much. We did lose the ball in the hedge a few times.

There was a bit of uneven bounce but except for Abhijeet we didn’t exploit it. You needed a little pace to do that: the pitch was well grassed and didn’t offer spinners very much. Abhijeet was good, though, and he went straight through two of the top order. With two of the others hitting Sushil into orbit we had four wickets very quickly, but they had a lot of runs. Moreover, after that they started to bat properly, and most of our fielding went to pieces, Alex being the main exception. Hugh’s fielding doesn’t go to pieces, but he was keeping wicket and that’s not the same thing. He’s better at it than most of us would be, but the uneven bounce troubled him more than the batters. Ritvij bowled a bit of ineffectual spin, was persuaded to try his quicker style and got a wicket immediately, but it was too late by then.