Hillesley CC Vs Venturers, Sunday May 10th

Venturers 291/4 (40), Hillesley 277/10 (40)

Play-Cricket Results

The first problem was that Krish belatedly discovered that being married comes with some social obligations, and cancelled, leaving us without a wicket-keeper. Not that Krish really is a wicket-keeper, but at least he does do it sometimes. Joji and Matt shared the job instead, less disastrously than they expected.

It was cold, grey and windy at Hillesley. Imran won the toss and batted, and Jaideep and Mizan got us off to something of a flyer, but after hitting two elegant fours and two fortunate ones, Jaideep slapped a short wide ball to cover. Matt’s bat made a broken sound straight away but he continued to use it for a while, without getting the ball off the square: then he changed it, still didn’t get the ball off the square, and got out. Joji survived an LBW appeal that the bowler clearly thought he should not have survived (it would probably have hit a fourth stump), and spooned one up in the air soon afterwards. Nobody seemed very eager to try to catch it, and in the end nobody did. Mizan ploughed on, playing almost everything to leg, although there were two nice cover drives and a square cut to show that he can do that if he wants to. Perhaps those accounted for the split fields that were set for him, which gave him plenty of space: also, their slow left-arm bowler seemed uncomfortable bowling to a left hander, or at least, to Mizan. At the other end, Joji was mostly careful and occasionally violent.

This went on for most of the innings. Eventually Mizan reached a hundred, for the first time, and retired by an unspoken but crucial mutual agreement. Naveen and Farooq both missed straight balls, Farooq having done some damage first, but the final boost to the innings was provided by Ollie, who scored a rapid fifty and took over from Joji, who was apparently getting tired and ended up with around 80 not out.

We hadn’t quite made it to 300, but we thought it was plenty. Imran’s first over suggested so, but after that he, Ajeet, and later Gregory and Farooq got hit around. Ajeet should have removed the right-handed opener in his second over, but the catch went down. Jonathan kept things a bit tighter, and our ground fielding started to go to pieces too, but even so, after twenty overs, they still needed 170, which is a lot. A short gallop after drinks busted Jonathan’s figures and brought the right-hander to his hundred, at which point he too retired. Joji and Mizan resumed with the ball where they had left off with the bat, and at least stopped the required run rate from dropping. We could imagine winning without actually getting any wickets at all, but a good catch by Ollie in the deep ended that idea and made winning in any fashion a good deal more probable. A burst from him with the ball further improved our chances, and then as the pressure increased they cracked first: people got bowled (six of them in the end), and the most dangerous remaining batsman pushed for two and was beaten by Imran’s accurate throw and Mizan’s quick hands.

A new danger appeared: if we got nine wickets, the opener would unretire. Things were getting tense, and there was a bit of an incident, in which we were entirely in the wrong. We smoothed it over eventually by going to the pub, but it shouldn’t have happened. We spread the field. Joji panicked, because we had six men in the deep: he was reminded that this wasn’t the IPL or even a league match, and we could have nine men in the deep and the wicket-keeper on the boundary if we liked. Eventually we did get the ninth wicket: again the batsmen pushed for two and Imran threw. This time two were available, but the batsmen, meeting in mid-pitch, spiralled round one another like two black holes colliding, and the orbit of one of them didn’t quite make it to the crease in time. That brought the opener back in, but number 11 was on strike. He survived, leaving them needing 33 off twelve balls. We got the opener off strike again, only for the number 11 to hit a six. Ollie might have caught it but for the sun, which made its only appearance of the match. Even so, they needed 21 off the last over and that was far too many. They still needed seventeen when the fourth ball was looped to where Gregory had been for most of the match; but he had been moved back, so as to allow one but not two, and got nowhere near it. That put the target out of reach, though, and in the event, the last wicket fell to another runout, off a wide that would otherwise have been the last ball.