Venturers Vs Bristol Accies, Wednesday July 12th

Venturers 135-3, Bristol Academicals 92

After a heavy shower during the morning, we were asked to use the artificial pitch for the first time. By then, it wasn’t necessary as it hadn’t rained again, but we had to do as requested. The main difficulty was to keep the stumps from wobbling. The pitch as a pitch behaved a little oddly, not being as consistent as you would expect an artificial pitch to be.

We never dominated the match completely but we were always winning. Bristol Academicals were frequent opponents in the past but were pretty much closed down by the events of 2020 and are still recovering. They were one short (Subrata and later Hrithik fielded for them) but otherwise they were not weak. For that matter, we only had eleven because Ash, from St John’s, was persuaded by Krish to join us for the evening. It was they who were batting at the end of our innings. Krish had opened and batted right through for 67: he had been caught off a no-ball, but it was a full toss so high that he would have known that he had a free hit at it. He was also dropped early on, off Josh from Southstoke who was slightly mysteriously playing for them. He is a good bowler. All their bowlers were good. In fact most of our bowlers were good. Most people batted quite well, too. The fielding was less impressive. Not only was there the usual easy catch dropped (Gregory at cover this time) but they managed the extraordinary feat of giving both batsmen a five in the same over. The bowler who suffered the extra eight runs on his analysis was partly to blame for one of them, as he didn’t go to the stumps, but not for the other which was at the other end.

Apart from Krish’s sensible innings we had useful contributions from Ollie (sensible); Hrithik (briefly violent, then out); Akash (four fours and a five, then got bowled swinging) and Ash (sensible). Siddhant, who doesn’t bowl, didn’t get to bat either. We thought we had enough to defend but were prepared for difficulties; but they never came. Imran was accurate and broke the opening partnership by just clipping the bails, which we had fortunately kept using despite the wind and the wobbly stumps. He later hit the stumps more firmly, twice, and Joji did exactly the same. Gregory, aided by an absurd run-out and an excellent running catch by Akash, almost finished things off. Akash was keeping wicket, which he did very well, and chased a top edge out to cover, calling off Krish and Hrithik who were threatening a collision. But the last pair, who had both bowled well, also batted well, and Bruce had one of his expensive days. There was no actual danger, because the overs were also fast running out, but they gave the score some justified respectability before Ash really ended it.