Bratton Vs Venturers, Sunday June 26th

Venturers 286-4, Bratton 210-6

Bratton is a fine place to play cricket. The buildings are nothing much to look at, although it is possible to get lost in them even though they have a simple linear design. Between overs you can admire the quiet village a little further up the rise, and the beauty of the horses in the next field; you can hear the trains come by from Cornwall, and watch the helicopters taking celebrities whom you may or may not have heard of to and from Glastonbury; and you can contemplate the steep slope of the downs and the earthworks of the two ancient forts at the top. This is deep Wessex. When the scorers ask for the bowler’s name they would not be surprised to be told ‘‘Durbeyfield’’ or even ‘‘Pendragon’’.

We had a discussion about who should be captain. It became clear that nobody wanted to be captain, and the duty devolved to Bruce. The drawback is that when he is captain he is reluctant to bowl, and tends not to bowl well. He lost the toss, and we were put in: Bruce would have batted anyway. That would have been a bit of a gamble because our batting was, on paper, powerful but not deep. Ritvij and Farooq, both very destructive, were playing, but apart from that there were only Jaideep and Charlie, plus Saad who is probably best described as a bowling allrounder. Alex can bat but is badly out of practice; Ritvij’s brother Rajarshi is only an occasional cricketer; Liam, Duncan, Bruce and Gregory are ineffective with the bat.

So it was important that Charlie and Jaideep should make a solid start. They did, aided by the fact that Bratton had few bowlers, and some of those they did have were coming off a heavy Saturday evening at the village pub. One of the opening bowlers wore black shorts, like Roderick Spode’s Saviours of Britain, and started off with a no-ball and several wides, but he improved as he gained practice or perhaps as his hangover wore off. By then, though, the openers were settled and Jaideep in particular was beginning to place his shots into the gaps. He often does this for a while, only to get out for twenty or thirty, in the style of James Vince; the difference being that an elegant twenty or thirty from a top-order batter in a village game is a success, whereas in a Test it is a failure. Charlie was alert for singles, sometimes to Jaideep’s discomfort, and the Bratton fielding grew ragged. The fifty partership arrived in the eighth over, unnoticed because the scoreboard was showing ten runs too many. The scoring slowed for a little after that, but soon picked up again with a spate of full tosses, many of them no-balls for height. Jaideep picked these off with ease: Charlie, who commits to the front foot a little earlier, often blocked or dodged them. Neither batter gave an actual chance. A mix-up between the wickets was the nearest thing, but there was enough time to sort it out.

The pitch was very thickly grassed but played quite well. The bounce was high by West Country standards, and true, suiting Jaideep’s back-foot style. He went to fifty with three fours in an over, two punched through the covers and one to fine leg, and by the time the drinks interval arrived, definitely needed in the warm windy weather, we were 128 for none off eighteen of the scheduled thirty-five overs. Jaideep had 80 of them, and he needed to face only eight more legitimate balls (plus two no-balls, both hit for four) to get to 100 for the first time. He hit one more four, his twentieth, off the last ball of the 20th over and walked off, job done.

Ritvij was persuaded by Charlie to play himself in, which he did by blocking one ball from each of the only two bowlers he faced. There was also one other ball he did not score from, which squared him up and would have hit middle and off, but had pitched well outside leg. Otherwise he swung at everything and had made twenty when he was spectacularly caught at cover point, one-handed, from his ninth ball. Now the scoring did slow, because Rajarshi does not have his brother’s eye, but he and Charlie accumulated for a bit until Rajarshi missed a straight one. Farooq joined Charlie, who continued to accumulate, and took a more positive approach. After 32 overs Charlie had accumulated fifty and also walked off, to be replaced by Saad. This, and the sudden realisation that it was a 35-over match, lit Farooq’s touch paper and he took 21 off the first five balls of the 34th over: Saad hit the sixth ball for four himself. In the last over, Farooq, chasing an imaginary target of 300, got bowled, leaving Liam to face two balls. Liam, though, missed the first one, and Alex faced one wide. 286 was surely plenty, anyway.

Well, it was. Bratton didn’t do badly, though, and might have done better if their left-handed opener, who had swung a not especially bad ball from Liam for six in the first over, hadn’t been bowled playing no shot to a prodigious leg-cutter (off-cutter to him) from Saad. Gregory started off tidily but Ritvij, replacing Saad, bowled too short for this pitch and was pulled repeatedly. The new batsman was quieter but Gregory’s tidiness ended, our fielding started to deteriorate and we began to leak runs at a rate that would have been alarming if we had had a less imposing score to defend. If the leak had continued completely unplugged it might have become a threat anyway, but that was never likely and eventually Gregory got one in the right place and bowled the aggressive opener. We never did get rid of his partner, who batted to the end for 54 not out.

The left-hander who came in at the other end did do some damage before miscuing to Farooq at square leg, and then the innings was definitively shut down by Farooq and, more surprisingly, Jaideep, who is a very occasional bowler. But he bowled well, and picked up a wicket with a ball that was fuller than the batter appeared to think. Another attempt at aggression came unstuck when the batter hit a hard drive on the bounce to Rajarshi at deep mid-on, who stopped it but did not gather quite cleanly. Thus encouraged, the batter set off for a single and was still some way short of completing it when Rajarshi’s direct hit demolished the stumps at the non-striker’s end. That was that, really, though the Saviour of Britain batted well until Ritvij bowled him very near the end. Bruce bowled one tidy over but Liam’s figures took a dent. Perhaps Bruce should have taken on his usual role of death bowler, but it didn’t matter.