Rode's tall, elegant opening batsman played a smooth and confident on-drive to Paul Snow's third ball of the match. There was a crack, and his leg stump disappeared. Perhaps we were on a roll. None of the faster bowlers really wanted to bowl up a hill into a stiff wind, so Gregory shared the new ball. The new batsman, potentially dangerous, liked room outside off, and from time to time Gregory gave it to him, always to bad effect. Paul maintained a better line but with no luck; however, he gave nothing away and Gregory not very much. So we were still in reasonable control when Kevin replaced Paul, and cleaned up the dangerous batsman with an inswinger. A man with a small but threatening beard, who has made many runs against us before, came next, and was most aesthetically bowled by Gregory's slower ball. In Gregory's next over the batsmen decided on a second run to fine leg and were beaten by John's throw. Another inswinger from Kevin put us in firm control, even though Gregory lost his line slightly. Usually we would have lost the plot at this point, but not this time: James, replacing Gregory, bowled accurately, and picked up two wickets. The first was caught behind by Paul (Betty) Martin, off an inside edge: inspired perhaps by Brian Lara, the batsman persuaded himself he hadn't hit it but had hit the ground instead. His bat, however, was not quite as upright as he perhaps thought it was. James's other victim did hit the ground, thereby stopping his shot and lobbing a return catch.

James soon got a third victim; but he top-edged a sweep, and would certainly have been caught if his own face had not been in the way. Fortunately the damage, though superficially dramatic, was not serious, and he was able to resume later (only to be bowled at once by Adam) and to field. The last remaining real batsman thrashed a catch off Duncan to Adam at cover, and we were left with number 10, who seemed to have no idea how to bat, and number 11. For some reason we decided we shouldn't bowl properly to them (though the injury earlier had not been caused by pace or uneven bounce), and they made an irritating stand; and in the end Rode made exactly 100.

When we had 100 to defend against The Star we made no sort of showing but Rode did rather better. James was out immediately. It was slow going for a long time afterwards, but Barrie and Adam knew that if they didn't get out, we would win. Adam was almost strokeless but Barrie, dressed in brown trousers and a T-shirt with the word "Norge" written on it, broke loose occasionally. Together they added 40, easily the highest stand of the match. It ended when Barrie, perhaps not backing up adequately or perhaps just pining for the fjords, was run out; but by then he had seen off the opening bowlers and put us in a very strong position. Slowly but surely, we worked our way out of it. Adam was caught behind off what he, too, insisted was an imaginary edge. John and Paul Martin kept going: slowly, but that was all we needed. Then, in the mid-60s, the scoring stopped almost completely. For no good reason, we began to worry: and Paul, John and Luke all carved at straight balls and missed them. Rode hadn't appreciated Luke: they were glad to have spent only three balls on him, but clearly hadn't realised that if they had needed fifteen the match would have ended there and then. Now it was well balanced, though still leaning our way with Kevin and Rob at the crease, and Duncan still to come. There were ten overs remaining, and Rode were starting to run out of good bowlers, when Kevin played a square drive and was spectacularly caught in the gully. For the first time, as Duncan came out to join Rob with 24 needed, we were losing.

There was tension around the scorebox, as Paul Snow and Gregory wandered nervously around, hoping they wouldn't be needed. But in the middle, Duncan and Rob knew what to do: survive, and wait for the bad ball. And they did: both of them, almost to the end, picked their shots perfectly. Anything loose went to the boundary; anything else was blocked. And then, at the last, Duncan got three loose balls in succession. He whacked them all; and the third one was pulled down by the bowler for a catch, rather than running away for the two winning runs.

So out came Paul. His first shot was injudicious, but gully dropped the resulting hard chance, and the single levelled the scores and kept Paul the bowling. Two massive forward defensives reassured us that he had not lost his head: and then the bowler tried to remove it for him with a full toss. Barrie firmly, and rightly, no-balled him, and we had won.

Back to the 2004 Fixtures List