Hillesley Vs Venturers, Sunday May 14th

Hillesley 142, Venturers 62

Mub commented recently that chasing is always difficult at this level. He is right, of course, but then everything else is also difficult at this level. That’s because this is the level of not being any good at cricket but liking it anyway. Today was a case in point. Our batting experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

Bruce won the toss and fielded, rather against the general opinion among the team. He said something about maintaining Simon’s tradition, but we never understood why Simon did that either. Events, though, did prove him right.

It wasn’t too bad to begin with. We did drop both openers. Kamal put down a relatively straightforward chance at cover but the batsman hit a second catch soon after to Tom at mid-off soon after. Gregory was generally thought to have done well to get a hand on his one at gully, by means of a “slow dive” (Mub again), perhaps more accurately described as a topple, but he couldn’t hold on. Krish was the bowler on all these occasions. At the other end Dinesh was a constant threat and bowled one very soon. That was all until Joji got an obvious LBW in his first over, but Gregory bowled too many bad balls and the opener, who played very well, was by now confident enough to make the most of anything loose. His partner was also quite effective from time to time, until he unexpectedly hobbled off injured after a routine single. The new batsman gave Gregory a simple return catch and we paused for drinks and to change wicketkeeper from Siddanth to Mub at that point, in the middle of the 20th over.

After a bit more overpitching (Gregory) and occasional underpitching (Kamal) we had cause to worry, but Tom proved effective and a bit of planning by him and Kamal finally dislodged the opener, through a good catch by Kamal. We still had trouble with the tail: seven, eight and nine made 41 between them. Joji, with a little help from Gregory and Krish, got through them eventually.

142 felt like a bit more than they should have got but didn’t really justify the pessimism that abounded at the tea interval. Eventually we realised that all we had to do was bat the overs: they couldn’t keep us to under three and a half an over. First ball, Jaideep gave a simple catch to gully, who dropped it. For the next three overs he defended calmly. Then Mub unaccountably got nothing at all on a plain straight ball. Krish was run out responding to Jaideep’s duff call. Kamal showed that he can defend and survived a close LBW appeal: the bowler took his disagreement rather too far, but we had also tried to argue with umpires a couple of times, which should not be happening. Later Kamal also played a few shots, not all of them eccentric: he took a dozen off one over. But he does not ask for guard when he comes in, so he doesn’t know where his stumps are: when a slow bowler came on he wandered across, aimed a flick across the line, missed and was bowled behind his legs. Jaideep played back when he should have played forward and was leg before; Siddanth, despite being told by Farooq not to play back, did the same thing. Farooq made the opposite mistake and would have been stumped if the ball hadn’t already flicked a bail off on its way to the wicketkeeper. Tom resisted for a bit but then he, Dinesh and Bruce missed consecutive straight balls. Joji, again with a little help from Gregory, prevented total embarrassment.