Priston Vs Venturers, Sunday September 1st

Abandoned (Rain) - Venturers 170/6 (27)

It always takes a bit longer than you expect to get to the ground at Priston. You cannot park there, so you must either drag the kit up the lane or drop the kit off, turn the car that brought it around in a narrow space, go and park it and walk back up the lane afterwards. Both of these take time, and that’s after you’ve found the village in the first place.

It’s well worth the trouble. The ground is quiet and green, and a complicated house with a great cedar tree stands at the far end, safely out of range. The straight boundaries are not very long and are marked only by impenetrable hedges. For this reason Priston have taken to using a white ball, even though the players wear whites, because it is easier to see against the background of the trees and to find in the hedges.

Imran was persuaded to alter the batting order. Not to reverse it: that was proposed, but Bruce and Gregory objected. Instead, Dinesh and Joji opened. Care was taken to ensure that the non-bowlers (Charlie and Siddanth) were not dropped down the order so far that they were at risk of not batting either. Despite all these precautions, three people did indeed take no part in the game at all.

The openers put up a rapid 50. They were not wholly convincing. Dinesh, in particular, mixed elegant drives with wild swishes. You would expect the swishes to be the more effective in the kind of cricket we play, but that was not the case. The bowling consisted of a slightly erratic but not harmless seamer, and a series of very slow and obviously hittable bowlers who were, in fact, very hard to hit. Eventually Joji walked past one when he tried to do that, and Dinesh played back instead of forward, but they had done well. A small collapse followed. Siddanth somehow edged a full toss to the keeper, and Ghulame simply missed. Krish and Charlie steadied things, in contrasting styles, and ran hard, including a couple of threes. Then Krish attempted a step-hit and omitted the second element. He was stumped efficiently, but had to have that explained to him: he had forgotten about the step, and thought that he must have been bowled. He was out by several centimetres, in fact. Next ball, Charlie was out by a similar distance, answering an optimistic call by Shreyas and not beating the direct hit. Thereafter, Shreyas and Parth batted with increasing authority and we were building towards a formidable total for a 35-over match. But there had been thunder rolling round the hills for a while, and with eight overs of our innings left the rain arrived. We waited, consumed some of the impressive tea, and then, as it was still raining, accepted that the season had come to a sudden end.

We didn’t want to drag the kit back down the lane. Joji and Bruce went to get their cars. Joji reappeared quickly but it was a while before Bruce returned, on foot and very wet, and reported that he could not engage the gears. We loaded what we could of the kit into Joji’s car, and after frantic negotiation with the opposition, the rest of the kit, Gregory, and the spectator, were given a lift back to Bath by the Priston wicketkeeper. Bruce stood dripping on the balcony, trying to get through to the RAC.