Royal Oak Vs Venturers, Thursday August 6th

Venturers 110-8 (20), Royal Oak 114-4 (17.4)

Play-Cricket Results

We tried to start promptly at six, as evenings are shorter now, but it didn’t quite happen. To try to fit the overs in, the opposition suggested a novel system of changing ends every two overs instead of every over. We noticed that this would mean that a bowler would start each over of a spell from the opposite end from his or her previous over, which would mean re-setting the field. That would probably end slower than the usual system unless, somebody said, you allowed a bowler to bowl both overs of a pair … this was clearly becoming unpleasantly like the Hundred; the philosopher who was playing for Royal Oak assented to our logic and we reverted to usual rules, except for not rebowling wides and no-balls.

In the third over of the match, Siddhant presented a simple catch to mid-wicket, who dropped it. Krish explained to him carefully what he ought to have done with that ball. Three balls later the bowler bowled it again and Siddhant presented the same simple catch to the same fielder. This time he caught it. A little later Krish carved the last ball of an over to point, and Monish comprehensively ran Joji out very soon afterwards. He pushed the ball gently towards Mid On, called yes, and didn’t run. He did take two or three steps as if about to break into a run, but then stopped, announced “no?” in a tentative tone, and stepped cautiously back into his crease, leaving Joji with nowhere to go. Usually, to see a mix-up of this quality, you need to watch Pakistan.

Monish hung around for a while after that, perhaps trying to avoid Joji, but then pushed a return catch to the spinner. A woman who had been lurking at third man was given the ball, marked out her run, and delivered with a slightly chest-on action that suggested that she was trying to bowl inswing. She did bowl inswing, just enough to pass neatly through the gap between Dinesh’s bat and pad and bowl him. Soon afterwards she did the same to Bruce, and in the meantime Zuber had hit one nice shot and got out to the spinner. Through all this Steve had kept us afloat with solid defence and a series of boundaries, but no runs had been coming from anywhere else and a retire-at-25 rule was in force. When that caught up with Steve, we were saved by a bright final partnership between Afzal and Ajeet, who pushed us well past 100 and ensured that Gregory, like Joji, did not face a ball.

Dinesh gathered us into a circle around a mysterious hole in the outfield, and assured us that we had a competitve total and that they didn’t have much batting. He was very convincing, but reality soon returned. We didn’t bowl badly, but the outfield was fast and we made a couple of mistakes in the field. They had put together something towards fifty by the time Joji bowled one of the openers, and next ball bowled the philosopher, who walked calmly off in a state of ataraxia. We did not take much advantage of this. The hole in the outfield at Peasedown is a movable hole, like the movable swamp in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Duck”, and it follows Krish around. He fell into it and dropped a catch earlier in the season: this time it scared him into a series of misfields. One opener retired and Joji inflicted two more ducks, both bowled, on less ataraxic non-philosophers who seemed more annoyed by the experience.

But we didn’t have a lot of runs, and there was a good left-hander at the crease. He edged one early on, but the ball crashed into Steve’s pad, nowhere near his gloves. After that, he took advantage of the slow pitch by not committing early, and was thus able to hit anything even slightly short, because he wasn’t already on the front foot. By the time he reached the retirement score we had less than twenty to defend, and there was still a good batter at the other end. The philosopher’s very young son, who had bowled decent leg-breaks earlier, came in: he defended sensibly, got off strike when necessary, and hit a four himself. Nobody but Joji, who was out of overs by now, made any progress with the ball. The nineteenth over was given to Siddhant: his first ball was hit high to deep midwicket, where Krish backpedalled and found himself well beyond the boundary. The next ball went in the same direction: Krish needed to come in this time, but the Hole got there first and Krish fell inexorably into it. A four a couple of balls later ended the match.