Sartre is supposed to have said that in football, everything is complicated by the presence of the opposing team. He may have been right, though the quotation is suspiciously hard to trace. Despite the efforts of Samuel Beckett to educate him, Sartre was ignorant of cricket, or he would have noticed that in this asymmetrical game having opponents actually makes everything less complicated. After what happened last time it didn't rain we were glad to see eleven opponents from St Stephen's: James invited them to bat. They did so rather more effectively than we would have wished, getting after some far from harmless bowling from Rob and Duncan. Kevin and Gregory slowed things down a bit and Kevin got two wickets in two balls. The second of these victims wore an impressive white helmet such as Gooch used to wear, and had, we were told, made a hundred in his previous innings; but he missed the ball. The surviving opener, though living dangerously against Gregory in particular, prospered. His new partner habitually walked down the wicket to Kevin and tried to play almost everything to fine leg, with more success than might have been expected. When he did try the off side, Tom caught him spectacularly, one-handed at silly point. Eventually Kevin removed the opener LBW, and then things were going our way; but no more wickets fell until the last ball of the innings. It came at 191-5 at the end of the 37th over, at which point Rob Burvill decided that he had enough runs and wanted his tea. This was a mistake, as tea wasn't ready.

In fact our bowling and fielding wasn't bad. The highlight was Tom's catch, quite likely to remain the best of the season. Not only was the ball travelling fast and low to his left, but the position of the batsman was also unexpected, four yards down the wicket. Later, Gregory attempted a one-handed catch too, off his own bowling. Opinion was divided as to whether he dived full-length (Simon's description) or fell over (his own), but in any case he got only a fingertip to the ball. Several throws hit the stumps, without quite producing the run-out that always seemed likely, and Paul kept efficiently. Many balls went in the air, uncontrolled but far from fieldsmen. All in all, 191 was slightly flattering to St Stephen's.

Rob Burvill was wrong about the tea, but he was always likely to prove right about having enough runs. It was, in fact, far too many. Simon speared the second ball of the innings to gully. Adrian walked in the most gentlemanly fashion for a very thin edge to the keeper, and was later seen retrieving his batting gloves from an inoffensive rhododendron bush. Kevin tried to pull one that didn't bounce. Paul came out of the nets and made a transit of the ground, like Venus across the sun, pausing only to overbalance and get stumped; and soon afterwards Tom was also leg before. All this before the score reached 30. John Cooke restored some respectability, supported first by Mark and later, more actively, by Duncan; but when he was out nobody stayed with Duncan. A little more application might have got the margin of defeat down into two figures, perhaps.

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