Venturers Vs Bristol Venturers, Sunday June 11th

Venturers 143, Bristol Venturers 108-8

Jaideep and Charlie gave us a solid start but both found bizarre ways to get out. Charlie got stumped, a dismissal completely out of character with the rest of his innings. He simply walked past one. Jaideep wristed a ball off middle and leg down to deep fine and, having hit it well, allowed the torque to spin him round so that he could watch the ball go. In doing so, he kicked the leg stump with his left foot. The rest of the innings belonged almost entirely to Hrithik, who made just over fifty with great violence and then missed a straight ball from an extremely slow bowler. Otherwise, Joji, Akash, Imran and Bruce each made useful small contributions, but it became necessary for Gregory to bat, which is always a sign of trouble. He blocked a couple and then Imran miscued, and we didn’t think 143 was going to be enough runs.

In fact it was plenty. We were playing against Ajay again, for the third time this year playing for three different teams. For once his bowling had been relatively ineffective, but he was part of an opening partnership that really threatened us, despite Imran’s characteristically economical opening spell. Gregory and Joji were also inexpensive but Abhijeet, surprisingly, wasn’t: Ajay even hit a six off him. It was not until the sixteenth over, with the score past fifty, that we broke through, when Akash removed Ajay with an excellent low return catch. The new batsman treated both him and Gregory with great caution, but Joji returned and took out the other opener, an easy catch for Imran, and another next ball. The non-striker through all this was also eventually bowled by Joji, for a protracted duck. Hrithik and Subrata bowled a couple of overs each without much incident, but by now there were two set betters again. On the other hand, they needed more than fifty, from six overs. Abhijeet and Imran returned: Abhijeet conceded seven in his first over but only two more after that, and Imran only six in his three, and they both got two wickets, leaving us comfortable winners. Only four of their batsmen made any runs at all, but they all got to double figures.