Venturers Vs The Ram, Thursday July 20th

The Ram 101-5, Venturers 105-9

Only the two Steves had cars so arrangements for getting to Sulis were complicated. Vishal broke new ground by arriving on an electric hire scooter. Joji and Kamal cycled, which in Kamal’s case caused a minor traffic jam as he has set his saddle very low and this is mechanically inefficient. We will show him a video of Jonas Vingegaard on the Tourmalet and see if that improves things, but it will probably just give him an idea for a new way of nudging the ball to an improbable part of the field. Imran turned up for long enough to hand over the match ball, which Bruce had left with him, but as he wasn’t playing it was Gregory who had to captain. He lost the toss, so we fielded.

Abhijeet was immediately effective. He bowled one batsman in each of his first three overs, all for ducks and gave very little away, but swung the ball down leg rather more often than he would have liked. Akash usually stopped it. Subrata at the other end had similar problems and it was some while before there were any runs off the bat at all, but quite a few assorted extras. The next pair were more resistant and although they still couldn’t get anything much off Abhijeet they got the score moving to some extent against Subrata, Gregory and Joji. The partnership was eventually broken by an alert stumping by Akash off a wide from Gregory. The batsman had been troubled by balls outside off and there was some idea of making him reach for them, but not as much as all that. Joji, still wicketless, was replaced by Steve D, who bowled well and should have had a wicket, only Krish put in an entry for Drop of the Year that will be hard to beat. It didn’t cost anything much as Joji, back on at the other end, bowled the same batsman soon afterwards. By this time Vishal had also bowled a couple of overs. Subrata and Kamal were given the last two, but the difficulties of control were still there and Kamal might reasonably have been taken off for bowling high full-tosses. Probably should have been, really: one of them hit somebody, fortunately doing no harm.

Mind you, they bowled some of those too. Steve A was caught at fine leg off one in the first over. Of course it didn’t count but the single that he and Krish ran was his only one before being caught at the other end. The bowler who had delivered the full toss, and assorted other rubbish, then clicked into gear and produced a really good ball for Kamal: in his second spell he accounted for Joji and Subrata and it was the poor first over that was anomalous. Before that, though, Siddhant and Krish settled things down and progressed without further loss to the mid-point of the innings, at which point the score was 46. Siddhant had been the more positive of the two, and had been judging which ball to hit rather well, so it was disappointing when he suddenly got out, especially as another danger was at hand. We had somewhat reluctantly agreed a retire-at-30 rule, and it was going to be applied to Krish. (It had been applied to one of their players too, but very near the end of the innings.) When that happened, the conditions allowed Krish to bat out the over and Akash duly gave him the strike back, but he wasn’t able to do very much with it. Vishal missed an ambitious hoick straight away. Joji lost the ball in the hedge but he, bowled, and Subrata, uncontroversially leg before, also did not last. We were also beginning to run out of overs. Akash and Abhijeet would have to do most of it; but then Akash missed a straight one. That left us needing 18, with Abhijeet about to be joined by Gregory (because Steve D had been umpiring and hadn’t got his pads on yet): on the other hand, Krish could return if we got to nine down. Abhijeet and Gregory ticked off ten of them, including a well-struck four by Abhijeet and a steered single from Gregory to give the strike back. But when Gregory got back on strike again he slogged and missed immediately, with the idea of not using up balls. Steve did the same but didn’t get a straight ball: he connected once, and that and Abhijeet’s more skillful approach got us very close. Another bye got Steve off strike. The next ball was down leg: Abhijeet missed it, but Siddhant, umpiring, decided it was a wide – again, uncontroversially. This levelled the scored by Abhijeet could do nothing with the extra ball, which ended the nineteenth over. Steve swung at the first ball of the twentieth and it bowled him, so Krish had to go back in, needing a single. He blocked the second ball, and bottom-edged the third for four, setting off a one-man pitch invasion by Kamal.