Venturers Vs The Star, Thursday May 22th

Venturers 150-4 (20), The Star 140-4 (20)

Play-Cricket Results

On a rather chilly evening we waited around for Bruce, who wasn’t playing, and one Julian, who was, to arrive. Bruce did, bringing the kit; Julian didn’t and our opponents were therefore one player short. If they had asked, we would have offered them a fielder; but they thought the missing player would arrive at any moment.

They bowled well. Krish survived a fairly confident LBW appeal first ball by getting outside the line: the bowler was less confident and probably suspected as much. Siddhant chipped a return catch to the same bowler. The slower bowler at the other end offered occasional width, but didn’t give much away either. Vijay looked completely lost, helmet askew, and survived a much more confident LBW appeal only because he had managed an inside edge. Then he leant back and cracked a perfectly good ball from the accurate opener to the square cover boundary. After that, they just saw the opening bowlers off and cashed in when a legspinner having a bad day, as legspinners all occasionally do, arrived. A retire-at-fifty rule was in place but both Krish and Vijay fell in the forties; Ghulame ran himself out but Joji and Matt finished off effectively. Another spinner, also having a bad day, pulled up lame in the last over and it had to be finished by Harjeet, whose three balls cost six: 55 of our runs came from four overs, and that was decisive.

They had a Tejas as a theateningly-dressed opener and Alex, the Bath groundsman: we couldn’t be confident of defending 150. Vijay seemed surprised to be asked to bowl and his first ball was a bit short, but Tejas hit it straight to Siddhanth at square leg, who fumbled and then held on. Chris, the wicketkeeper, who has made a lot of runs against us in the past, miscued his second ball, and suddenly we were in control. We never lost it, but they kept in touch for a long time because Alex and Harjeet scored at a rate sufficiently close to what was needed that one bad over would have tilted it their way. Imran removed Harjeet after a while, but three very tight overs in the middle, two from Rahul and one from Gregory, pushed them back to the point where we could afford one bad over. Gregory duly bowled one, but it no longer mattered. Alex was removed by the retirement rule but it made little difference: they scored at the same steady rate more or less regardless of who was batting, and mostly regardless of who was bowling. But it was slightly too slow all the time: they acceleration they needed never came, and in the end we won comfortably.