Responding to a desperate plea for eye-witness accounts, Paul Jordan supplied this match report for your perusal:
The match pitched together two teams with a number of familiar faces who had Beehive connections, not least Roy Page and Eli Ellwood, who duly opened the batting for Remnants. The Beehive opening bowlers found a good line and length, with Roy (11 off 16 balls) and Eli (11 off 23 balls) scoring off the occasional short ball and finding the fielders regularly. Roy was the first to go with a fairly routine catch, followed shortly after by Eli, possibly unaccustomed to his role as opener. At this point we had been well pegged by their opening bowlers, and after 12 (six-ball) overs we were just 41/2.
The two wickets brought together Martin Law (16 off 23 balls) and John Richer (53 off 34 balls, including 48 off his last 19), who got into gear and started to score freely off the change bowlers, who were none the less accurate. John hit some splendid agricultural sixes sending the tiles of the pavilion roof scattering as well as straight six past the bowler, the shot of the match. We were approaching a more respectable score and finished up with 116 all out, which given the on field confidence of the Beehive seemed short of a challenging target.
Joe White (1/8) bowled with his usual unerring accuracy and pace and got an early breakthrough, but that left two pretty classy batsmen at the crease. An expensive over gave them the upper hand temporarily but they were pegged back by good bowling from Naveen Chouksey (0/15) and Paul Jordan (2/30). Himanshu Agrawal (1/38) and Eli Ellwood (0/25) continued to bowl well and with the last few overs in sight our total looked a lot more repectable. The Beehive wickets tumbled and a signature catch from Matt off Paul's bowling and a fantastic run out with Himanshu and MartinLaw combining gave us a slim chance with 4 runs needed off the last over. Step in Andy Bell (0/0) - Cometh the hour . . . but sadly 4 byes robbed us of the opportunity of making it just that bit closer. All in all this was a surprisingly closely contested game which The Beehive deserved to win but by a much narrower margin than either team probably suspected. Perhaps we can put this right in the re-match later this season.
