Venturers Vs Bathford, Wednesday July 29th

Bathford 89-5, Venturers 90-0

Just occasionally we turn in an efficient performance. Today everything worked, starting with Gregory winning the toss. He doesn’t like being captain but nobody else wanted to do it. We fielded, and Ian and, but for a spate of wides early on, Dhruva gave little away. Chris’s first over went for a dozen, including two of the four boundaries we conceded (Dhruva and Dave gave away one each). Instead of panicking as usual, though, Gregory remembered what Simon does in these situations and kept his spinner on, expecting wickets later. Chris duly supplied three of them, for only seven more runs. Gregory was more economical himself even than Ian; and Dave was only a fraction more expensive and rounded off the innings with a reprise of his sitting caught-and-bowled that won him Catch of the Year last year when he did it against Bill Owen.

We had already lost once this year chasing ninety in a 20-over game, and the batting resources were on paper a bit thin, but we didn’t need them: four people neither batted nor bowled (one of them Nikhil, who kept). Roger and Matt simply accumulated the runs. They hit only six fours between them, but thirty singles kept the score steadily ticking along and we won, with no fuss whatever, half way through the seventeenth over.