Broughton Gifford Vs Venturers, Sunday August 23rd

Broughton Gifford 185-9, Venturers 167-6

Getting a team together for this match was difficult and we didn’t quite manage it: we had ten. We had a wicket-keeper, a welcome innovation, but no captain to speak of. Gregory reluctantly did the job. He lost the toss, which was a pity as he would have batted. CB and Jerome started steadily but at this stage the pitch was still playing well and the bounce was fairly even. Eventually CB got one to jump and catch the glove: it looped over the head of Dan, the wicket-keeper, and was spectacularly caught by Jaideep, who had started to go the wrong way and dived back to his left. Ritvij was a reasonable replacement for CB and Gregory’s first over suggested that he would be a good replacement at the other end. He wasn’t. Tom, a loan from Broughton Gifford, did better and bowled the left-hander who had come in at three. Ritvij began to lose his line. As we approached the half-way point, things were getting out of control. Bruce’s first few balls were as random and as expensive as Gregory’s; and then, from nowhere, he produced a slightly quicker ball that nibbled away off the seam. The opener, committed to attack, pushed at it with hard hands and the edge flew at a comfortable height to Jaideep, who held on. Next over, Tom removed the dangerous BG captain with a smart return catch, and then asked to be taken off because of back pain.

Gregory tried again into the by now strong wind, but was still unable to control the ball, or to think about his bowling while being captain. Bruce’s control, by contrast, was total, and his though processes clear. Bowling better and better, while Gregory and later Jerome struggled, he quietly demolished the middle order. One was bowled by a clever slower ball. Two more fell to ones that moved away, one clipping off and one the edge, which gave Jaideep his third slip catch. That is as many as we caught all year last season. By now the batsmen were a solid tail-ender and a very young boy. The former was a bit lucky: we dropped him once (a difficult chance) and several times he lobbed balls into spaces. His greatest escape, though, came when he hit Bruce firmly to mid-on and set off for a single. CB was the fieldsman and he threw hard at the base of the non-striker’s stumps. The batsman was nowhere near his ground when the throw exploded the hand sanitiser dispenser. It also struck Bruce’s hat, but the bails stayed on.

We spent a few moments discussing the question of five runs: it was creatively agreed that since Bruce was required to put the hat on the ground, he could not be said to have wilfully obstructed the ball so the penalty was waived. We spent rather longer trying to put the dispenser back together, but CB had destroyed it.

The boy, Jack, could bat, but it would have been unfair to allow CB to bowl to him. Jerome, for the few balls he bowled to him, slowed it down. He did bowl the other batsman. We had agreed at the beginning of the innings that two bowlers would be allowed to bowl ten overs and the others eight: this was to avoid having to overbowl Ritvij or ask Tom to risk his bad back. The idea had been that the extra overs would most likely be bowled, if at all, by CB and Gregory, but in the event Jerome and Bruce bowled nine each. In Bruce’s ninth over the boy chipped one back and Bruce jumped, stretched one arm up, and caught it, claiming five in an innings for the first time. Then he insisted on being taken off, which was probably a mistake because CB and Ritvij failed to get the last wicket and it cost a dozen runs.

We had enough batting to be reasonably confident about chasing 185, but the pitch was no longer reliable. There was extravagant slow turn and uneven bounce. The wind had got up. Ritvij wandered about out of his ground but the wicket-keeper fumbled, otherwise even standing back he might have had a stumping. Soon after, Ritvij played the wrong line and lost his off stump. Dan looked very good but edged to slip, trying to leave. He stood and waited for the umpire’s decision, but Duncan, upwind, hadn’t heard the sound. Eventually a consensus was reached that it was out. Jaideep, who stayed for a bit longer, got a thin edge to the keeper. At the bowler’s end nobody heard a thing and this time Duncan would not have given it out: once Jaideep realised this, he turned and walked off, earning himself applause from the opposition.

This time, though, CB did not hit his first ball to mid-on, and after a slow start he and Richard accelerated to the point where they were threatening to settle the match in our favour rather quickly. They ran well, and hit hard only when there was a clear opportunity. CB hit the ball in the air only once, and it landed twenty yards beyond the boundary. Richard never hit it in the air at all. One of the bowlers injured himself after bowling eight balls, and soon after that gave up trying to field: Bruce, Gregory and later CB acted as substitutes (only fair, as they had lent us a fieldsman throughout). They had enough bowling for this not to matter as much as it would have done to us. Seventy were needed when Richard top-edged a pull and was caught and bowled by the accurate left-armer who had come on in the downwind direction. For a while it looked as if the run rate would finish us off, but Jerome began to find ways to score and CB did not resort to slogging. There was a tight stumping, probably correctly turned down by Jaideep, and later in the same over Jerome played the ball towards the Jack, positioned about thirty yards away at midwicket, and called for a run. He had hit it softly: it was not a crazy call, but CB was a bit slow to respond to it. Jack, who is about nine, fielded cleanly, ignored the bowler’s pleas for the ball, and nailed the stumps at the striker’s end as CB, still not realising the danger, stretched but did not dive for the crease. Jaideep thought for a moment and, undoubtedly correctly, gave him out.

We still weren’t quite out of it, but we needed nine an over off the last few. Jerome and Tom kept up with that for a while, but were falling behind by the time Tom was given out caught behind off a thin edge. He didn’t think he had hit it, but the umpire was at the downwind end and this time many people heard a sound. Duncan played sensibly but the rate was now too high. Jack was allowed to bowl both the last two overs, in a further creative interpretation of the Laws.