Venturers Vs Bristol Venturers, Sunday August 4th

Venturers 270-6 (40), Bristol Venturers 108-9 (31.5)

Sometimes we just win. The most difficult part of this match from our point of view was at the very start. The new padlock on the scorebox had the code 418, which is easily remembered or looked up as it is the highest score successfully chased in a Test Match (WI v Aus, St John’s, Antigua, 2003). But it didn’t work. We checked Cricinfo to see whether the record had been broken without our noticing, but no. The stumps were inside the scorebox, so we couldn’t start. We rang for help, but none arrived. Eventually the opposition produced some, uh, equipment from their cars and we forced the lock open. Later we wrote to the STV explaining that either they had changed the combination without telling us, in which case it was their fault, or the lock wasn’t working at all, in which case we hadn’t broken it. This argument was accepted, perhaps a little grudgingly.

After that the actual match was relatively uneventful. Hirshith got out immediately, but Shreyas (orthodox) and Kamal (mostly not) are a difficult combination to bowl to and they rapidly took up to a strong position. Shreyas was surprised to be applauded for his fifty, as he thought he had far less than that because he imagined that Kamal was outscoring him. In reality he had made slightly more than half the runs at that point, but he was out soon after. Siddhant was briefly violent. He had one piece of luck when he was bowled by a double-bouncer (which is a no-ball) but he didn’t cash in. Instead he stepped past one and got stumped, not long after Kamal had hesitated over a second run and not quite made it. Joji fell quickly, but Rubbaniy, Parth and Mizan all contributed useful runs. Parth was the most classical but Mizan’s casual pick-up for six over long leg marked the point at which the bowlers sort of gave up. We ended on 270, our highest scoe of the season.

It was always going to be plenty of runs, but Bristol Venturers do have some good batting. However, Joji was back to somewhere like his best: Parth, Mizan and Gregory all bowled effectively, and we pretty much blew their top order away. The remaining obstacle (which we didn’t have to remove, as this was an over-limit game) was the left-arm opening bowler, who also proved competent with the bat. The quick win that we had been hoping for receded as he dug in. His partner played with almost no backlift and only tried to hit if given anything short. This frustrated Dinesh completely, and even when Joji fielded close in with a helmet on to Gregory’s bowling, he continued to dead-bat everything. Eventually the deadlock was broken by Bruce, who recovered some of the rhythm that he has been lacking for most of the season and floated a ball through the left-hander’s defence, tipping the leg bail off. Hirshith then removed the last two, one a return catch and one simply bowled.