Remnants vs. Downing College

Tuesday, June 10, 2003
Fitzwilliam College

Downing College (89/5 in 20 six-ball overs)
lost to
Remnants (91/3 in 19.2 six-ball overs)
by 7 wickets.

One of the many strange aspects of Remnants cricket is the tendancy for runs of games to follow unusual patterns for a few weeks at a time. At the moment two such motifs have made themselves apparent.

The first is that the weather on the morning of a game is in complete contradiction with that during the game; thus when I woke up to the sound of heavy rain and briefly checked that there was indeed total cloud cover I was able to roll over and go back to sleep safe in the knowledge that the evening's game would be played in glorious sunshine, as indeed it was.

The second pattern concerns the games themselves, in which we bat second and score about 80, regardless of whether the opposition have set a target of 200 or, indeed, about 80. Today's match certainly started out the right way: George Speller (0/10) got the ball 'round the batsmen's throats and Phil Watson (0/21) landed his looping deliveries on the spot, keeping two pretty classy batsmen under control.

Then a funny thing happened: Daniel Mortlock (2/6) and Martin Law (2/30 in his Remnants comeback appearance after a ten-year absence) both got wickets with rank full tosses, and were generally more erratic than our openers. This weirldy common occurence always strikes me as one of cricket's great injustices; in part it must be due to the batsmen relaxing having seen off two good bowlers, but I think the fundamental and annoying fact is that it's much easier to get out to bowling that is a bit random. Thus Phil Marshall (0/10) and Mike Jones (0/8) finished off the innings by being too accurate to take wickets, having to be content themselves instead with being almost impossible to score off.

Of course it also helps when the fielders do their bit, and lately we've been taking almost all the easy chances that have come our way (with the notable exception of Phil Watson messing up a ridiculously simple diving slips catch) and also doing pretty well on the ground, especially John Young (putting his body behind the ball), Graham Stafford (not letting the ball just come to him) and Martin (effecting a cool-as-a-cucumber run out from short cover after the non-striker had backed up way too far).

Facing a target of just 90 we all felt pretty relaxed about the run chase, but Sally made the excellent point that we'd managed to make a similar pursuit extend into the final over last week. Such dramatics seemed pretty far away as Nev Fidler (13) and an out-of-sorts Nick Clarke (a "mere" 40*) eased themselves into the innings, but after a couple of quick wickets the scoring slowed down and the required run rate climbed towards six an over. Having managed to snatch excitement from the jaws of mundanity, Nick and John Young (a stylish 25) accelerated as required, leaving Mike Jones (4*) on strike with five balls remaining and two needed. He chose the most dramatic way to finish the game, smashing a boundary through mid-wicket and allowing Sally to breathe easy once again.