Monday was horrid -- torrential rain, winds whipping across the Fens, puddles everywhere. Nonetheless, Geoff spent much of today ringing 'round the team to confirm that the game was ``definitely on''. So we all headed off to Gonville & Caius College's playing fields to take on the Computer Laboratory. There were ominous grey clouds covering the whole sky, and little drops of rain kept appearing on my glasses, but at 6pm we went out to field . . . only to be greeted with a downpour. This looked like being it, but our determination to play meant we spent the next two hours skidding 'round on a soggy pitch and playing a pretty dire game of cricket.
We started with some seriously crap leg-spin from Daniel Mortlock (a lucky 1/26 in the end) and some seriously troublesome off-breaks from Tony Malik (3/11, his third such haul this season). Some ungainly slogging got the Computer Lab up to 36/1, but then, thanks to Tony and Faruk Kara (2/28, although it was 2/1 after his first over) they slumped to 44/6, and a rout was on the cards.
Unfortunately some of their more secure batsmen came in and took the score to 80-odd, before another collapse at the end of their innings. This was in part due to Rich Savage (2/11), who extracted some vicious bounce from the pitch, and also due to some top fielding from Andy Owen. He'd bowled tidily but unsuccessfully to get 0/15, but took an excellent catch at mid-off and then completed a stunning run out by kicking the ball into the stumps (a proper drive, too) from some five metres distance.
The innings also ended in comedy, with the striker going for a suicidal run (so much so that Rich, the bowler, was able to stroll to the stumps and take the bails off) under the mistaken belief that it was the last ball of the innings; his partner knew otherwise and refused to budge. Despite what reads like complete domination, the Computer Lab had scored 101 (and it would have been more if Paul Henderson and John Young hadn't been as keen to put their body behind the ball on a tricky and slippery outfield).
Scoring 102 on a highly irregular pitch might have been a problem but for the fact that our opposition seemed devoid of decent bowlers, bar an ebulient leg-spinner who came on way too late. Nick Clarke (20) and Dave Rowson (32) set us up with a steady 2nd wicket partnership, and then Tony Malik (24* in the face of some amusing sledging) and Andy Owen (16*) saw us home with 12 balls to spare. However the run-chase was rather dull and I think we were all quite keen to head home (or to the kebab van, in Faruk's case).