The Star Vs Venturers, Tuesday August 23rd

Venturers 145-4, The Star 149-4

We hurried to an early start and most of us arrived before most of they did. Not yet with us was Imran, the natural choice as captain, so Gregory did the toss so that we could get started. Unfortunately he won it, which meant that another decision had to be taken. After consultation with Bruce he chose to bat, and Steve A and Varun were detailed to open. We lent The Star a couple of fielders, dropping to one as more of them arrived but never to zero, as they only ever had ten people.

We agreed eighteen overs, to be bowled nine from one end and then nine from the other, and wides and no-balls to count two but not to be rebowled. This was just as well because the first two overs produced a lot of both, and got us off to a good start without either batter having to do anything beyond not getting out. Although that wasn’t easy: when the bowling was not wide, it was good. Steve got bowled in the fifth over and Miles got a good ball early on, not before both of them had produced at least one good shot each, but Varun, who had seemed very jumpy at first, settled and Farooq hit hard when the opportunity presented itself. One such opportunity was the second last ball to be bowled from the Beckford’s Tower end, where there is a fine stand of big trees. Farooq lost the ball in the middle of them. Steve D and Dinesh went to look for it, and after a few more overs we began to think about sending a party to look for Steve and Dinesh. By this time Farooq had got stumped and George had come in, and he gave us a different task, namely pacifying an angry motorist. He hit a reverse swat, and the ball pinged against the corner of the pavilion and ran out into the road where it was run over by an angry bloke in a white car. We know he was an angry bloke because he turned the car round and came back to complain. He may have thought that he was angered by the imperceptible damage to his not very new car, but in reality he had been angry before he ran over the ball and was still angry afterwards. He was greeted by a committee of three economists, and retired baffled in short order. In the meantime, Steve and Dinesh had found their way out of the wood and Dinesh was putting his pads on, because Varun had been well caught in the deep; but Dinesh was never needed, as Rob and George batted out the overs.

Eight an over was going to be hard to defend on a very fast outfield. George gave us a chance by bowling one opener, but he, Dinesh and later Gregory all leaked runs. Farooq caught a good catch, also off George, but the result of that was that we had batters with contrasting styles at the crease. There was a bloke who was minded to bash it, and a woman who wasn’t but was, as she proved, very capable of reaching the boundary and even more capable of running aggressively. They required different fields, and we didn’t always get it right. The Star’s retire-at-25 policy caused a bit of turnover. The usual policy is retire-when-Harjeet-gets-bored, but he is apparently in Canada. Some order was restored by Imran, and Varun’s first over helped. His second didn’t so instead Imran tried all our remaining bowlers with the idea that the batters wouldn’t be able to get used to anything. Bruce at least made the situation no worse. Miles got a wicket, but his first ball was a wide and his second a Finn’s Law no-ball: that is, he kicked the stumps. Those four runs made a difference. The last over was given to Steve D (Steve A had been heroically keeping wicket, and had given away remarkably little under the circumstances). They needed two. The first ball was pushed firmly towards midwicket: the fielder there shut it down. The second went nowhere. The third, with a bit of pressure on the batter by now, was driven towards mid-on. There was an easy single but they tried for two, and Varun hit the stumps at the non-striker’s end. A single was all they wanted. The field came in, and the batter swung for the hills and got enough connection to clear everybody. He could easily have skied it: we had made it a lot tighter than we had expected.