Venturers Vs Bathford, Wednesday May 3rd

Venturers 158-5, Bathford 81

So successful has our recruiting been that fourteen of us arrived at Sulis for the first home match of the season. Not entirely without difficulty, as we haven’t been so good at recruiting people with cars. Bathford’s recruitment had been less successful so we lent them Bruce and Siddanth, and Dan umpired: all according to plan.

Then Imran won the toss, and batted. Simon, our regular captain who is unfortunately unable to play at the moment, would not have done that, but Imran has more confidence in our batting. Imran was right: Jaideep set off at a steady trot and had made the first dozen runs by himself before Mub, who had played eight dots, suddenly opened his scoring with a six. The pattern continued: Jaideep scored steadily in singles, with occasional fours through the covers, and Mub blocked most things and from time to time hit one into the far distance. Fairly soon he lost the ball. Neither was much troubled, though Jaideep got himself into a tangle once or twice and was once fortunate that the ball that pinned him on the front pad had done too much. Eventually Jaideep, tiring, announced his intention to retire at the end of the over. The scorers told him that he mustn’t do that because he was on 49. Mub got him back on strike; Jaideep took the necessary single; Mub hit a four to bring up his own fifty and off the last ball of the over, hit a simple catch to midwicket. So both batters walked off after an opening stand of 107 in thirteen overs.

Bathford chose this moment to try Bruce. The effects were immediate and dramatic. Rohan hit Bruce’s first ball out of the ground, tried to do it again next ball and holed out on the (short) square leg boundary. Steve pushed the next ball into the on side, ran, and was about two yards short when the throw exploded the non-striker’s stumps. Subrata almost ran himself out next ball without facing at all, sent back by Kamal just in time. After a calm over from the other end (a single by Kamal), Bruce resumed with a volley of wides and no-balls, then another single from Kamal and the wicket of Subrata, who scooped a catch to the keeper. (Bathford didn’t use Siddanth as a wicketkeeper, having an efficient one of their own who kept in shin pads. This practice is common in women’s professional cricket and seems to be spreading: it has some obvious advantages.) Dinesh also got out as soon as he tried to attack Bruce, who was then removed from the attack with figures of two overs, 3 for 16. Jaideep and Mub had gone at more than eight an over in their stand.

After that, even Kamal’s batting seemed pedestrian. He and Joji restored order for a while: then Kamal was given out by Dan, who had detected an edge although what the wicketkeeper was appealing for was a stumping (but an appeal covers all forms of dismissal, so there is nothing incorrect about this). Kamal didn’t think he had hit it, but the notion that you always know when you’ve hit it has been thoroughly disproved by DRS. Joji and Sanjay managed seventeen off the last two overs, resulting in what looked to be a very challenging score.

It was a very challenging score. It was getting dark, again, and Dinesh’s pace and Sanjay’s bounce were hard to deal with. Siddanth hit one boundary, but then Dinesh bowled him; at the other end, the other opener gave Jaideep a simple catch. The next two did not last long, one bowled by Dinesh and the other by Sanjay. There followed the only passage of play, apart from when Bruce was bowling, when we were not in control: a stand of forty, but compiled too slowly to be a real threat. It was similar in style to Jaideep and Mub’s effort: one batter accumulated steadily and the other blocked much of the time but hit anything loose very hard, including two sixes off Imran. Eventually the accumulator got tied down by Gregory and missed when he tried to be more active. The other was still, just about, a danger, but he edged Joji’s quicker ball and was splendidly caught by Rohan, who was standing up and had very little time to react. Gregory, Joji and Subrata removed the tail: Joji was on a hat trick at one point but Bruce defended well and was left not out when Subrata ended the innings with his second ball.