Venturers Vs The Star, Wednesday July 22th

The Star 139-5 (20), Venturers 141-5 (19.5)

Play-Cricket Results

Everybody turned up on time. In fact, too many people turned up. It seemed crowded. We recognised one or two of them as St John’s players. Gradually we worked out that two matches had been scheduled at the same time. We panicked slowly, and eventually discovered that one of the matches was supposed to be on the main square, not the second one that we usually use. Josh had arrived early and spoken to one of the local staff, and she had told him which match was on which square: we were still on the second square. St John’s and their opponents trooped off to the first square and the associated pavilion, and we could begin.

The Star like to have a retirement rule, which we usually don’t. That favours the side with stronger batting, but this time it wasn’t at all clear which that was. The Star’s usual retirement rule is, as far as we can tell, that you have to retire if Harjeet is bored watching you. It is applied with especial rigidity to Harjeet himself. For compatibility Harjeet agreed to get bored with anybody who reached 30, so that they would have to retire at the end of the over. (A few days later, some of us played a match in which a rule of this type led to both batsmen retiring at the end of the 19th over, in both innings.) Three of their players reached this limit, but only one, one of the openers, actually retired. The other opener tried to reverse hit what would have been his last ball anyway, and spooned a catch to Siddhant, and the third player to reach 30 did so in the final over. Of our bowlers, Faisal and Zuber were economical but unthreatening; Ajeet was more expensive than usual, despite bowling quite well; Gregory and Afzal were slightly more expensive but more threatening, although their only actual wicket was the failed reverse. Viraj was somewhat erratic but picked up two wickets: one of them was Harjeet, who had no time to get bored because he missed his third ball. Dinesh and Joji finished things off tidily. We were tidy generally, despite some variable bounce, which Josh dealt with well: there were only seven extras.

We needed seven an over and we kept to that almost all the time. Josh got bowled straight away, and Siddhant was squared up by his first ball, but survived because he had got outside the line of off stump. After that he played well. Zuber was a bit scratchy but contributed usefully and Faisal raised the run rate, taking advantage of the one erratic bowler on the day and targeting the short boundary. After they both retired, though, things slowed. Bruce correctly tried to get on with it, but picked out cover: Afzal and Vijay got stuck, against accurate bowling. Neither of them lasted very long, but somehow we had gone from needing 40 off seven overs, with eight wickets left, to needing 24 off sixteen balls, with five wickets.

A crowd had assembled: three appreciative but slightly bewildered blokes, one of them Dutch, with many beer cans. They were Viraj’s friends and straightaway decided to support us. Joji hit his first ball for four, but the rest of the over yielded only two singles. The nineteenth over was very tight: Joji and Dinesh did well to squeeze seven out of it. So we needed eleven off the last over. Ajeet was next in, then Gregory, so we couldn’t afford to lose wickets. Dinesh swung at the first ball and it went for four, not in the direction he intended. The next was more controlled and produced a comfortable two. Five needed off four balls: even losing a wicket now wouldn’t necessarily be fatal. But Dinesh made no contact with the third ball, nor with the fourth, and suddenly we were losing. Viraj tried his best to explain to the crowd what was going on. The fifth ball was slightly short and Dinesh hit it hard and flat, but high enough to clear the short boundary and thud into the grass bank. The crowd cheered politely, then more enthusiastically after Viraj had explained again, and started tidying up the beer cans.