Report by Daniel Mortlock:
Some of the veterans playing in this evening's game will remember Barry (Baz) Dare, who played irregularly for Remnants from the mid-'80s until the mid-'90s. He wasn't a Cambridge resident, so only managed a few appearances a season, but in the 33 games he did play he had a huge impact with his immaculate off-spin, taking 42 wickets at an average of 13.36 (sixth best in club history) and a strike-rate of a wicket every 14.38 balls (third best in club history). This included one of the most revered Remnants spells when he took 6/4 against Jesus College in 1997, although he wasn't far off this when he took 4/5 against Robert Sayle's in 1988. Sadly, Baz lost his battle with cancer a few weeks ago - the day after the end of this year's Fathers And Sons (FAS) tour, an institution he founded back in 1982 and which is still going strong today (with a number of Remnants involved).
Geoff has written his own heart-felt tribute to Baz, but another can't hurt, so here's mine, from back in 2001 when I first joined the FAS tour and was informed that I would be playing in the match against Stanton (which, incidentally, is the most lovely place to play cricket on the planet). A little uncertain of myself amongst a team of what looked like proper cricketers, I expected to get a few overs if things were going okay and maybe do fine leg both ends, and pre-empted this by kind of keeping out of sight as we prepared to start the game. That said, I did (re-)introduce myself to Baz, who gave me the warmest of welcomes and asked what I did. Avoiding the temptation of saying "anything that'll let me", I said I bowled seam-up darts, to which Baz's reponse was "Here's the new ball - you're bowling first over. Do you want 5-4 or 6-3?" Immediately emboldened, I steamed in off my long run (six paces rather than the usual four), took 3/29 and even called off half the team to take a return catch when a top edge hung in the air. Add in a few runs in the chase (before Baz's son Cliff, who some of you will have noticed in this year's Remnants vs. FAS game, called me through for a non-existent single) and I immediately felt part of the club, which before long became part of the family. The remarkable thing is that my first experience playing cricket under Baz's watchful eye wasn't remarkable - he spent decades making people feel part of the team and part of the family.
And that's hopefully what we manage at Remnants as well, something we had the chance to do today as Oli Melvill came along to play for us for the first time (having turned out against us for the Academicals a few weeks ago). And so when Oli said that he bowled there was no option but to pay tribute to Baz in deed - imititation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all - by giving him the first over against Sharks. The only difference was that, rather than a 5-4 or 6-3 field, we opted for 7-2, with two slips, third man, gully, point, cover and mid-off to complement the lonely mid-wicket and square-leg fielders. To add to the fun, Sharks had sent out erstwhile (or perhaps sometimes) Remnant Michael McCann to open; the result was surely the most eventful debut over in club history:
As indeed he was, coming onto bowl the next over; and, while it wasn't sufficiently eventful to warrant ball-by-ball commentary, it was implausibly successful, yielding two of the desired wickets. This left Sharks in a right mess at 11/3, but they recovered superbly thanks to their surviving opener who quickly settled on the effective, if not wholly original, strategy of repeatedly smashing the ball to the boundary. Our bowling became rather ragged (or maybe was just made to look so?); and our fielding wilted under the very clever pressure applied by the batsmen, who kept deliberately under-hitting the better balls to nick quick singles or get cheeky second runs. We also donated plenty of those ourselves, with wild throws being fired in from all directions and backing-up the bowler treated more like an optional extra than an intrinsic part of the game.
About the only thing that gave us any measure of control was, once again, the sheer variety of bowlers we had to call on. The most economical were Daniel (3/18, having come back and become the second member of the Remnants 300 club after Tony Malik) and Faruk Kara (0/19 and, as a result of the above, now one of only two members of the Remnants 200 club), Eli Ellwood (0/14 in his first spell after a back injury had kept him out all season) and Catherine Owen (0/15), although all went for more than a run a ball. Dave Norman (1/17) and Paul Jordan (1/22, but not the 13-for that he needed to make it to 300) both got wickets, although it was rather revealing of the balance of power that both came through outfield catches by Ollies: Olly Rex held onto a swirling skier that had him running with the ball while looking back over this shoulder; and then Oli Melvill held firm when Sharks' opener, now on 86, mis-timed a pull in the last over of the innings. A few more lusty blows off the final deliveries pushed the total above 150 . . .
. . . but, as you all know, that's getting a bit dull this year, and highly chaseable, especially when one has the luxury of being able to send out a batsmen whose season's scores so far are 86*, 38*, 24, 54, 16*, 60, 32*, 7, 59*, 35*, 70 and 3. Today Grant added another 63 (off 44 balls) as, with Rexes Richard (24 off 22 balls) and Olly (42 off 35 balls), they made ridiculously light work of what only a few years ago would have been a most daunting target. There was some good fortune - several catches went down, and several other misfields resulted in boundaries - but ours was a remarkably drama-free innings. Indeed, the only real break in our progress came when Daniel suddenly realised Grant had just passed fifty and so instigated a burst of applause while the bowler was in his delivery stride; fortunately, Grant survived that ball, although both he and Olly did get fine edges to the 'keeper an over or two later.
Daniel, in the middle of a full statsgasm - he was only a 1.5% chance to get exactly the three wickets and one catch needed - considered elevating himself up the order in search of numerical perfection - 30 runs today would have seen his Remnants ledger tick over to an implausibly-pretty 300 games, 3000 runs, 100 catches and 300 wickets - but it was already clear that the match report was going to be more than sufficiently self-indulgent already. Eli Ellwood instead got the chance to finish things off in front of his watching parents, and he was untroubled in getting to 11 off 11 balls before unluckily being run out by a superb direct hit when he called for a sharp single. That meant that Oli Melvill got to book-end the match he'd begun with an brief innings of 10* off 4 balls (4 . 2 4) that almost perfectly mirrored Michael McCann's earlier in the day (. . 2 4 4 W), but happily didn't include the W at the end.
But what Oli and Michael did share was a post-match pint, with most of us staying on for some well-earned (in the "I did something fun for a few hours but it involved a little running around" sense of the word) beers. That gave members of both sides the chance to admire the Sharks' spectacular new blue-and-white blazers - the link to Sharks isn't obvious, although perhaps a splash of blood red would have been too literal. Still, they were more than happy to play up the name when Grant mentioned that he'd strained a muscle during his innings, the immediate and excited reaction being that it was their one victory of the day, clearly being a shark wound . . .