Venturers Vs Rotork, Wednesday May 14th

Venturers 188-4 (20), Rotork 126-7 (20)

Play-Cricket Results

The sun was shining brightly and the pitch was dry. This latter description one might consider uninteresting, but then again, the weathering of an artificial plastic Sulis pitch can only ever really be described as “dry” or “wet”. Due to slight confusion over the match start time, a few Venturers arrived early with a practice ball and bat just to make sure that they remembered how to field and hit the ball (they could, luckily), before the Rotork team and remaining Venturers showed up. As seems to be common in these kinds of friendlies with “player borrowing”, familiar Venturers Krish Mirchandani and Siddhant Jain were lent to the opposition this time around.

A coin toss was called, which went in Imran’s favour, to which he decided that his Venturers should bat first to take advantage of the early light. To give the opposition an opportunity for some amount of light for their batting innings, it was agreed that for each twenty-over innings, the first ten consecutive overs were to be bowled from the same end with the last ten being bowled from the opposite end. While the final preparations were being made, it wasn’t clear whether the Venturers actually had a new ball with them, or whether it was still in transit, so, the players opted for a brand-new pink ball that was kindly donated by the Rotork team, which by this point were now donning their silver one-day style jerseys (a likeness to those worn by a New Zealand team from the past); the Venturers opted for whites as usual.

Upon the match start, Joji and Zuber were sent in early, initially testing the bounce and movement off the pitch. They already knew how Krish generally bowled, but they needed to get used to all of the other bowlers, who were being rotated relatively quickly. For the early and mid-part of the Venturers’ innings, consistency seemed like a distant concept to the Rotork bowlers and fielders, with many extras conceded (even with the umpire’s leniency on wides), and the batsmen cashing in on boundaries whenever long-hops or half-trackers came their way. In the blink of an eye, as per the agreed rules, Zuber was forced to retire on 53, while half-century-hungry Joji wanted to continue ploughing on with his innings until he himself obtained the fifty milestone, also receiving an honourable send-off back to the pavilion (really a glorified shed/bench). By now, Venturers were 121-2 after 12 overs. After cameos by Kamalpreet (2, retired out) and Vijay (31), the Rotork ex-wicket-keeper Nottingham (no relation to the associated County Cricket Club) was put into bowl and clearly had the speed and energy that those engineers had been longing for, albeit too late. With additional contributions by Steve (7), Dinesh (12) and Kaushik (6), as well as a single from Imran (who was run out by failing to ground his bat in time), Venturers ended on 188-3 from 20 overs, which one would agree is a very par IPL score, but significantly above par for a village match.

After a short innings break, the Rotork(?) batsmen Siddhant and Krish were sent in to face off against the opposing captain and experienced bowler Imran. In Venturers’ effort to bring the fire early, it wasn’t long before the batsman and wicket keeper Divyansh were forced to brace themselves for Dinesh’s genuine quick stuff, with preceding run-ups not much more audible than Michael Holding’s “whispers”. Unfortunately for Dinesh, the deliveries were played moderately well, letting the ball run onto (and then off) the bat, but then a couple of mistakes added two wickets to Dinesh’s name (both catches). Imran decided to switch to the engine room of bowlers, namely Kaushik, Viraj and Ajeet, who jointly offered a challenge through their variation in bounce and pace. Having recently switched ends, Rotork CC had barely crossed the hundred mark; in contrast, Venturers CC were considerably further ahead at this point. Thus, one could imagine Rotork’s “worm” requiring some swift climbing imminently in order to give them any chance of winning the match. The earlier component of the “engine room”, namely Vijay, ultimately achieved an lbw dismissal (although replays suggest that the victim was some way from his crease), with half-centurion Joji effecting a clean-bowled wicket, which was rather satisfying to watch. Once the stumps and bails were carefully restored, soon Zuber got a wicket to his name (nice catch by Vijay). After the full twenty overs elapsed, Rotork CC ended on 126-7, 62 runs short of the Venturers’ IPL-esque score; a comprehensive victory for the home team, before the sun was about to fully set.