BaNES Vs Venturers, Tuesday June 13th

Venturers 117-1, BaNES 120-2

This was the 20th anniversary of professional 20-over cricket. Amateur 20-over cricket was certainly being played in England twenty years before that. Our attempt to celebrate this occasion was also pretty amateurish. A hastily-assembled side (Simon, overwhelmed by being exams officer, had forgotten to send out the email) should have nevertheless been competitive, but wasn’t. Krish and Miles started steadily, continued steadily and were still steady when the retire-at-30 rule kicked in and removed Krish, who had just hit the only six of the match. Joji fell quickly, trying to force the pace. Tom was a bit more successful. Miles also got to 30 and then accelerated in the remainder of the over, which he was permitted to bat out. Vishal and Tom swung violently at everything, missing sometimes, and dragged us to something respectable but probably indefensible.

Our attempt to defend it started with a bizarre misfield, and improved only a little. There is a short boundary on one side at Peasedown, which our opponents targeted much better than we had. Abhijeet and Joji bowled fairly well but still give away runs. Before very long one of the openers tried to hit Abhijeet to the long boundary and was caught by Tom, and Joji beat the bat a few times, but there was nothing else approaching a chance until the ninth over. Then a top-edged sweep briefly interested Vishal, keeping, but it landed a long way from him. Soon afterwards the batsman concerned reached the 30 rule anyway. Tom also bowled well and yet gave away runs. Gregory was patchier: too many four balls but occasionally threatening, especially to the left-hander who had come in. The threats never amounted to anything and it was Steve’s rather occasional slows that brought us back into the game. He tied down both batsmen and eventually bowled the left-hander, but even he conceded more than a few to random swings. Robbie bowled one and half accurate overs, but by then only six were needed and a couple of possibly controlled edges to third man at the end of his second over, the 19th, were enough.

An aggregate of 237-3 shows that there wasn’t much for bowlers. Three catches went down, two by us and one by them: Bruce, however, probably couldn’t see his at all as it came directly out of the setting sun. More positive batting by both sides, and disapplying the retire-at-30 rule, could easily have led to two scores of 170-1.