Broughton Gifford Vs Venturers, Sunday May 5th

Venturers 169-7 (35), Broughton Gifford 170-3 (30.3)

This game happened thanks to the headmaster of Stonar school, who plays for Broughton Gifford and didn’t want any more matches cancelled. So we played on the artificial pitch on the rather nice ground at the school, about three miles away from Broughton Gifford. No tea as such, but there were some refreshments, including bacon sandwiches for those who will eat those.

The usual discussion among the people who didn’t want to be captain resulted in the job falling to Dinesh, who lost the toss. The Broughton Gifford captain for the day put us in. This was Broughton Gifford’s no longer secret weapon, Emma: she gets a lot of wickets, and among them there are always a few naive characters every year, who think she is somebody’s wife or sister who has agreed to make up the numbers and has been given an over out of politeness. Well, obviously not if she’s captain, but she has other ways of getting wickets and Sahil edged her second ball straight to slip, Richard Guy, who dropped it. Sahil wasn’t doing anything silly. He continued not to do anything silly. Joji did, at the other end, and was hit on the glove. The wicketkeeper (Daisy, also not there out of politeness) slipped slightly as she started for the easy catch, panicked, sprinted, and overran it, thus setting the tone for the entire match. It had been wet, and we had a brief interruption for another shower before long.

Thereafter Sahil and Joji proceeded calmly for a while, until Joji somehow spooned a catch to slip while trying to clip a ball off his pads. Emma had just taken herself off, which was a pity as the contest between her and Kamal would have been fun to watch. Faced with less confusing bowling, Kamal batted in a less confusing way than he does usually. There were few unexpected deflections, and a couple of almost classical off-drives. At the other end, Sahil hit anything short. The wicketkeeper technically dropped another catch but off a big deflection, standing up, and if you can catch those you aren’t playing at this level. Less technical was the six via long-off’s hands, who had earlier desperately scrabbled a ball back from a white line that wasn’t the boundary. At last Kamal decided it was time for the scoop, and played the ball onto the rubber base that the stumps stood on. The bails did not fall, which was fair enough as the ball hadn’t hit the stumps; but next ball he played a conventional cut to a ball too close to him, and Daisy caught it. Vishal was bowled slogging, but Tom kept Sahil company for a while, until Sahil gave Richard another chance to catch him, at mid-on now, which he did at the second attempt. Tom, Dinesh and Tobias all got out to the same bowler, trying to force the pace, but Emma returned as a death bowler which perhaps wasn’t the right idea, and Parth was able to keep the score moving. He and Ajeet ran madly during the last couple of overs but we still felt as if we might have made rather more. Even so, 169 looked like a reasonable score.

Dinesh and Parth bowled three tidy overs each without really looking like getting wickets: just tight enough to get the batsmen thinking that they needed to look for runs. Joji did the same for five balls and was then suddenly deposited under the tree that we had used for shelter earlier. Gregory, with a dodgy shoulder, wasn’t sure he would be able to bowl but had a try. His first ball missed the pitch altogether but the batsman walked across and patted it to mid-off, so it wasn’t a wide. It should have been a no-ball, but the umpire was either unaware of Law 21.7 or chose to ignore it. A couple of balls later one landed in the right place and the batsman swished at it and got bowled. But then things started to go wrong. The other opener was severe on anything short, and Joji for once got hit about. Richard Guy had come in and seemed likely to stay in. Gregory’s shoulder was improving but he still bowled a knee-high full toss. The opener launched it, but more high than far: Tom got underneath it and dropped it. Dinesh tried Tom instead of Joji, but he got hit about too. But then Gregory, with his shoulder working now, bowled Richard. Dinesh offered him a slip to the new batsman: he declined, and the next ball was edged past Kamal’s right glove (also a purely technical drop), so Dinesh won the argument, even though it probably wouldn’t have carried to slip. Gregory soon bowled that batsman too anyway, bringing in the headmaster. Then we dropped the opener again, after which he simply played Gregory out and attacked Vishal at the other end.

Word that the headmaster was batting must have got around because a crowd of sorts assembled: about thirty people, several dogs, a couple of horses and a distant herd of cows. The cows and about half of the people weren’t really paying attention to the cricket, but it will probably be the most spectators we get all season. The headmaster simply gave the strike to the opener, whom we dropped again; but he was on about ninety by then and retired soon afterwards on reaching a hundred. By now our ground fielding had gone to pieces too, making Bruce’s figures look much worse than they should have. The opener was replaced by Daisy, who defended solidly and pushed singles: the headmaster hit a couple of boundaries, and that was that.