Venturers Vs Broughton Gifford, Wednesday June 29th

Venturers 127-3, Broughton Gifford 128-4

Perhaps we were a bit slow starting, but 127 is usually enough at Sulis. Milo and Harsh were confronted with something they weren’t really ready for. At one end they had to contend with Emms, Broughton Gifford’s unpredictable leg-spinner. If she gets her length right, which she does about one match in three, she is very difficult to hit and many people perish in the attempt, because her leg-breaks (they are all leg-breaks) are spun quite hard. Harsh perished in the attempt. So did Milo, a bit unluckily as he was very well caught on the longest boundary. At the other end was Jack, who is about twelve. The main thing you need to know about him is not to take on his arm, which is more powerful than you think and extremely accurate. But this time he he bowled, and again it was the accuracy that was the problem. Nobody could get him away. Between them they bowled seven overs for thirty, and after that we were just too far behind. Another accurate bowler took over from Jack, but Farooq and Chan cut loose at the other end and brought us back to somewhere near where we needed to be. Then Farooq was cut off by a retire-at-fifty rule (we benefited from it later) and Chan eventually missed, leaving Steve and Sushil to run lots of singles but no more over the last couple of overs.

We didn’t manage to dry up the scoring for very long. Saad’s first over was tight and later Gregory and Milo each briefly put the brakes on, but it never lasted. One openers quickly miscued Milo but then we had the ex-rugby player to contend with, who simply hits everything a very long way. He had a bit of luck: a couple of mishits that went nowhere, and a charge down the wicket which the bowler saw but he still got just enough bat on it. But in between he did quite a lot of damage, and was only stopped by the fifty rule. We probably needed to take more frequent wickets than we did: Milo, Jash, Gregory and Alex got one each, but widely separated. In the end they had nine balls to spare, so it wasn’t close.