Southstoke Vs Venturers, Wednesday April 24th

Southstoke 75-4 (20), Venturers 78-3 (16)

Thirteen of us showed up at Bathampton, smelling faintly of naphthalene: Bruce was present purely and briefly as a spectator, and Jaideep was there to umpire. Gregory was acting as captain because nobody else would do it, and lost the toss. They batted, which meant that the game finished in something like daylight: nevertheless, the pink ball improved things. We agreed to bowl five consecutive overs from each end, so as to save a bit of time. We expected a lot of wides, as everybody was out of practice, but only Nikhil started off with one and he got a wicket next ball. Southstoke insisted on a retire-at-25 rule, which was unpopular with us, but in the event nobody got that far.

Fact: naphthalene in mothballs was banned in the EU in 2008.

Dinesh and Parth therefore both got to bowl down the hill, at least to start with. The first wicket fell in the second over: it was a complete accident. Ritvij, at cover, picked up a firmly hit shot off a ball from Parth and noticed that the batsmen were having a discussion about whether to continue running or not. So he threw at the bowler’s end, choosing speed over accuracy which was the wrong thing. There was nobody anywhere near the bowler’s stumps but the throw arrived at Parth’s feet. He tried to collect it and fumbled, and thereby redirected it so that it did hit the stumps after all. When the new batsman was ready the ball could not be found. It turned out that Farooq had correctly returned it to Jaideep, who had put it in the pocket of his jacket and forgotten about it. Jaideep was a bit erratic generally. We ought to have breathalysed him first really, but we would probably have got a false reading because of the naphthalene.

A couple of overs later Ritvij and Parth combined for a more conventional wicket, a simple catch for Ritvij off what was actually a bit of a long hop really. The batsman concerned had been given out earlier by Jaideep, and recalled because Mub (the wicketkeeper) was of the opinion that he hadn’t hit it. So was the batsman, but we weren’t going to take his word for it: DRS has long exploded the notion that you always know when you’ve hit it. Jaideep was not being erratic this time: the ball had flicked the shirt, with the bat not far away, and those are very hard to get right. Then Joji pinged the off stump in the way that he does, and a collapse seemed to be forming: but we only got one more wicket, when Nikhil’s second attempt at a first ball was driven straight at Jonathan. Otherwise we just kept them quiet. In theory four catches were dropped and there could easily have been another run-out, but in reality only one of the catches was the sort we would expect to take.

Steve and Hannan occupied the crease for half the available overs, mostly rather uncomfortably. They kept the score moving enough, though, even if Hannan did refuse a single to long-off for no apparent reason. At the end of the tenth over Hannan walked across his stumps and was bowled behind his legs. Steve was also bowled soon afterwards, but would have had to retire if he had made any more runs anyway. Ritvij unfurled a pick-up over midwicket for six and a reverse bosh for none: Farooq was more careful but he edged to the wicketkeeper. After that Ritvij, with a more successful reverse at one point, and Mub walked to the target. We won easily but it wasn’t a pushover. Perhaps the most successful aspect was that five people batted, six bowled and nobody did both: therefore nobody did neither.