Combe Down Vs Venturers, Wednesday August 10th

Combe Down 171-7, Venturers 115-6

We dropped six catches. Our opponents matched that in the first eight overs, and surpassed it in either the tenth or the eleventh, depending on whether a dropped catch off a no-ball counts. So that’s not why we lost. Our ground fielding was a bit less good than theirs but if anything we bowled better than they did. We still ended up with more runs to get than we could reasonably hope to manage.

Their opening partnership was one reason. George caused problems but didn’t have enough luck to get an actual wicket: Akshay, who kept wicket, put down a very difficult catch off him. Krish seemed a bit out of sorts and was inaccurate by his standards. One of the openers was severe on anything short, and the outfield was fast. After seven overs the score was already about 70 and the captain, Imran, decided that it was time for spin. This broke the partnership immediately, if luckily: Gregory’s first ball was a low full toss and resulted in a simple catch to cover. In the next over the other opener skied Imran. Gregory called for it, waited calmly and when the ball came down missed it completely. He made amends of a sort by bowling the opener, and the new batsman with the next ball, in his next over. Now there were two left-handers in: one pulled at a ball too full for the shot and was leg before but the other was clearly a threat and he launched an attack, first on Imran and then on Gregory. The attack on Imran was fairly successful. The attack on Gregory had more mixed results: one shot flew towards Krish at deep mid-off, who came in and then backpedalled and missed it; and another flew towards Krish at deep mid-on, who came in too far, rose like a defender meeting a corner, and headed it into his own net. He was unhurt, though we weren’t convinced of that at first. The batsman celebrated by launching an attack on Yash, and then retired. One of the Varuns removed his partner, but the rest made decent progress. The last two drops were both by Saad, and both difficult, one very difficult. That left Bruce to give a demonstration of how to do death bowling to competent tailenders: three singles and two wickets in the final over.

Their superior ground fielding was immediately on display in the first over, a maiden to Charlie who was not trying to hang around. Akshay connected once and Charlie accumulated a few before giving an easy catch: by this time they had already dropped both openers. Yash took his usual frantic approach and was dropped three times, two of them easy catches, before Akshay was dismissed by a much harder catch at mid-off. Krish and Yash occupied much of the rest of the innings. One of their bowlers got the yips and ended up bowling something like a twelve-ball over: even that was not enough to get us back within touching distance. Four overs of accurate offspin, and Yash’s wicket, gave us no way back. Krish got one that kept low: Saad was under pressure to get on with it and tried to hit a straight ball as soon as he came in. We lost track of the score and everything else around here, but we were comfortably losing. In the last over there was another spate of wides and we lost track of the number of balls, so the match ended when Gregory, umpiring, announced that he had had enough of this match and took the bails off. It was getting dark by then: we had spent rather too long in futile adjustments to the field.