Venturers Vs Broughton Gifford, Wednesday June 26th

Broughton Gifford 151-7 (20), Venturers 115-7 (20)

The difficulty here was that we did half the job all the time. Imran bowled well and got a wicket in each of his first three overs. Hafeez was extremely economical, but not threatening. The fourth-wicket pair made steady but not spectacular progress until just after the mid-point of the innings, when Gregory bowled both of them. But the sixth-wicket pair rather took things away and we made no further progress with the ball. Gregory was taken off for being expensive and was replaced by Joji, who unexpectedly proved more expensive. Dinesh and Parth were no better. There was a retirement towards the end, possibly for injury rather than for having reached some pre-set score, and two run-outs, both absurd, in the final over or two. Those restricted the score a bit, but 150 is usually quite a lot of runs at Sulis.

It was a similar story when we batted. We avoided being tied down or demolished by Emma this time, largely because of Alastair, on load from Bathford. He played well, and was further helped by being a left-hander, which confuses her. Krish gave good support and we got to 80 without loss; but then Krish picked out a fielder, Alastair and Hannan missed, and nobody else made anything considerable. We never threatened to win.