Report by Daniel Mortlock:
Cricket is many things - but, most fundamentally, it's unfair. This truism was demonstrated once again in this evening's game against Sharks:
And yet Sharks ended up winning comfortably, the apparently tight final margin of 7 runs being an illusion.
Still, we had the perfect start when Joe White (3/17) bowled the Sharks opener with the first ball of the game, doubling his season's wicket tally in the process. (No suggestion that Joe hasn't bowled well this year, and he's been our most economical bowler, so presumably has just been unlucky.) At the other end Tim Simmance (0/24) recovered well after starting with two big wides, and would have had a wicket if he'd held onto a fairly simple return catch. After 7 (six-ball) overs the Sharks were struggling on 33/3, but from then on pretty much everything went wrong for us. Perhaps most important was that the ground fielding fell apart: half the side had arbitrarily opted to use their feet to stop the ball; three or four boundaries went through the fielders' hands; and even having gloves was of only limited help as we conceded 7 byes. Daniel Mortlock (1/26) ended up pretty frustrated after generating a huge number of edges and then seeing two catches go down. At least it wasn't a team-wide case of dropsy as in the Grantchester game, as we did take four catches: 'keeper James Robinson held onto two fine edges (one sufficiently thin that the batter genuinely seemed to believe he hadn't hit it); Faruk Kara made a nice grab at gully despite not having seen the ball until it was about a yard away from him; and Joe took a well-judged overhead grab falling backwards (which induced the batter, the ubiquitous Sumit Sahai, to claim Joe had somehow grounded the ball as he fell back, despite the fact it was the back of his hand which was on the ground, something he was still chuntering about after the end of the game). Perhaps more important, though, was that our ground fielding fell apart: half the side had arbitrarily opted to use their feet to stop the ball; three or four boundaries went through the fielders' hands; and even having gloves was of only limited help as we conceded 7 byes. Paul Jordan (2/28) and Neeban Balayasoderan (1/7) did take some late wickets - but they were too late to prevent Sharks posting a healthy total of 137/8.
Sharks began their defense with a pair of slow and accurate bowlers who were both difficult to score off - we managed just three boundaries from their combined 8 overs - with the result that openers Qaiser Ahmed (4 off 7 balls) and John Young (5 off 17 balls) perished going for big slogs. After 8 overs we were 36/2, comparable to Sharks' score at the same stage, but with the difference that we had the pressure of knowing we needed 102 runs from the remaining 72 balls. We did dominate the rest of the game, as Neeban (30* retired off 29 balls), James (31* retired off 21 balls), Joe (32* off 26 balls), Daniel (18* off 14 balls) and Stefan Mandelbaum (5* off 5 balls) all played largely chanceless innings. Unfortunately, the Sharks bowlers did two things better than we did: they bowled just a single wide (as compared to our six wides and four no balls); and they delivered very few genuine bad balls. The result was that, while we were in the ascendancy on the pitch, there was just too much to do.
