Hinton Charterhouse Vs Venturers, Sunday July 21st

Venturers 198-9 (35), Hinton Charterhouse 153-9 (35)

We never win against Hinton Charterhouse. They have abundant cricketing resources, as well as abundant financial resources because of one of their local celebrity, a vacuum cleaner salesman. After the match Jonathan spotted that they have spent some of the resources on the wrong kind of vacuum cleaner, which doubtless has to be hidden when the boss comes round. Their resources also include more local celebrities. They also know exactly how much of these resources and celebrities they need to bring to bear in order to defeat us by a comfortable yet friendly margin. The ex-Editor of Wisden, for instance, was unused this year.

As our strength is not easily guessed, even by us, there has been some jeopardy in the past, but in two years when we did have an unexpectedly strong team that might have tripped them up, no match took place. In other such years they have simply beaten us anyway.

We finally ended this long losing streak with a solid team performance such as we seldom produce. The single moment that made most difference occurred in the first over of their reply. Imran’s second ball was steered to backward point, where Mizan fumbled it and and allowed a single. Imran instructed him to move in a few yards: the next ball was sliced in the same direction, and Mizan dived forward and caught it, knuckles on the grass. The batsman stared disbelievingly. So did we. And when, in the next over, Siddhant caught an only slightly easier chance in the same position to remove the other opener, we were obvious favourites. Even better, Siddhant repeated the trick two overs later.

Still, several times this year we have taken early wickets in chases and made no further progress. Often we have simply not had enough runs. This time, though, Shreyas had given us a brisk start (it was some time before Jonathan faced a ball at all) before being caught at mid-on and incurring an audible obscenity warning. Why he chose to use an English obscenity, when perfectly good obscenities are presumably available in Kannada and he could use them without causing offence, is a mystery. Aditya looked good and then missed a straight ball from a celebrity, a very famous rugby player who bowled erratically but occasionally well. Jonathan pulled a muscle running a single, and was persuaded to allow Aditya to run for him. Farooq had been bizarrely bowled off the end the bat handle, playing no shot. All this meant that Kamal didn’t have to go out of his way to cause chaos, because there was chaos already, so instead he batted rather sensibly. Jonathan was a bit restricted in batting, though, and the bowling was good. When Jonathan edged to slip we could see ourselves running out of batting, but Kamal and Joji were positive right up to when Kamal reached the 50 limit. Soon afterwards Joji was threatening it too, having taken sixteen off three balls at one stage, but he got out first, Mizan missed, and it was left to Siddhant to bring us close to 200. Both Bruce and Gregory were run out in the last over attempting second runs to keep Siddhant on strike, in Gregory’s case without facing a ball at all. That allowed Kamal to go back in but he faced only one more ball.

The 50 rule was also used in the chase. After the three early wickets we made little progress, and the scoring was dominated by one batsman. We bowled reasonably well, but Mizan in particular had little luck. The retirement brought little respite, as the other partner took over to good effect. The required run rate was a little high but not out of reach, and we knew that there would be more batting to come: at all events, if the rugby player connected he was likely to hit it quite a long way. Maybe we were not winning; but then the established batsman missed an ambitious shot at a normal offbreak from Gregory, and that stalled them. The rugby player offered correct defence but only hit the ball hard once, and then it hit his partner and his partner’s bat, and went nowhere. The partner was his son, who was unhurt and unbothered by being hit (and had bowled well). It was, apparently, the first time they had played a cricket match together and he later posted a picture of them batting together, with Bruce in the background, on social media. Social is right: this was a very good-spirited game, even though everybody involved was trying to win it.

James couldn’t bowl and Gregory was no longer what was needed: instead Joji and Farooq kept the brakes on and gradually worked through the tail. Two catches by Shreyas and sound ground fielding, especially from Bruce and Siddhant, helped a lot. We worried about the eventual return of the retiree, but long before we got that far the run rate had become impossibly high. Only in the last over, bowled by Bruce, did we let anything go: a drop in the deep, off the only bad ball. But it didn’t matter by then.