Venturers vs Bradford 39, Wednesday July 23rd

Bradford 39 73-7 – Venturers 75-3

Bradford 39 were a bit short-staffed. Two boys turned out for them, although this certainly didn't weaken them in the least, as events proved, and some of their other players seemed rather occasional. On the other hand, our catching was back to its usual standard, Gregory dropping one for the first time and several other people joining in, but we more than made up for it in other ways. Alex, keeping wicket, was particularly good, but he wasn't immediately called upon as Simon Turner and Andy Young simply bowled the openers. Alex took a splendid leg-side catch off Andy to follow it up, and much of the Bradford 39 batting had gone. They did have one evidently very competent bat left, but he showed little aggression, even when first Rob (sometimes) and then Gregory (repeatedly) offered him eminently hittable material. It was probably the failure to get after those two that cost Bradford any real chance in the match, because the rest of the bowling was accurate. And the ground fielding was all right too, but until Alastair collected a good catch in the deep near the end the only hope was that catches would go to Alex. He caught a second one, off Matt, and took an efficient stumping, but the batsman we were worried about not only failed to attack Gregory and Rob, but got out LBW playing no shot at all to Matt. Not enough of a shot, anyway, to save him: he was certainly struck outside the line of off stump, but the umpire rightly disregarded the vague gesture he had made with his bat.

Chasing only 74 to win, we made a bad start when Alastair ran Simon out.
This was a preposterous bit of calling: the surprising thing was that Ahmad was not the victim, as he has been of most of this year's runouts.
Ian G seemed determined to play big shots only, and was bowled by one of the boys, who is physically too small to be much of a threat now but will be a menace to everybody once he gets a bit taller. The other boy, bigger but less impressive though still rather capable, accounted for Paul, who miscued to square leg; but nobody got past Alastair, who atoned for his lapse by steering us home with a sensibly-paced innings, helped at the end by Ahmad.

Fixtures & Results 2008