Broughton Gifford Vs Venturers, Wednesday June 28th

Venturers 184, Broughton Gifford 71

Generally speaking, if four of your top five make ducks, you lose. Ours did, and yet we won by over a hundred runs (the scoring was a bit approximate). On the way to the match, Gregory had firmly warned those in his car about Emma, who bowls leg breaks for Broughton Gifford and gets a lot of wickets, mostly of people who haven’t taken her seriously. She inflicted three of the ducks. To be fair, only one of the people who made ducks had been in Gregory’s car and that was Vishal, who got out to a different bowler. And Krish got one that kept low first ball. But Siddhant and Ivan both charged her and missed (she hit, both times) and we would have been in serious trouble if Ryan, who had been in Gregory’s car and bats properly anyway, hadn’t batted properly. He was eventually removed (temporarily) by the retire-at-35 rule that was in force, which Gregory, captain for once, had unsuccessfully tried to negotiate upwards. By that time his partner was Rohan, who also batted sensibly, and he was replaced by Tom, who batted even more sensibly. Emma had been unaccountably taken off by now. Rohan got caught in the deep, but that brought in Akash, who took over so effectively that he got retired too. By then Tom and Joji were both out so this brought in Gregory, who astonished everybody by thumping his first ball down the ground for four. Then Abhijeet got bowled, which resurrected Ryan. There were still almost four overs left. Gregory resolved not to use them himself and got stumped trying to hit again, resurrecting Akash, but the hoped-for final acceleration did not occur because Ryan holed out at long-off.

We used six bowlers, and they each got a wicket in their first over. As in our innings, one opener made quick runs while others fell about him, one bowled by Abhijeet and another by Tom. Then we encountered a bit of resistance, ended by a good catch by Ivan and a fast straight ball from Akash to remove the opener. The captain for the day almost ran himself out first ball, and Joji bowled him straight afterwards. The innings ended abruptly after that: two bowled aiming ambitious shots at Gregory; two mad run-outs; and a real collector’s item, a slog by Richard Guy that gave Vishal a wicket with his first ball. We had faced only seventeen overs and bowled only thirteen, but it was raining slightly and quite dark already.