Report by Daniel Mortlock:
A destructive innings of 40* by Hume Fisher, followed by Rahul Jhawar's impeccable opening spell of 2/8, ensured a thumping 57-run thrashing in this evening's Remnants vs. Grantchester game. Such dominating performances were no surprise - Hume and Rahul are currently first and fourth, respectively, on our list of most points per match this season - so it really was a pity that they were playing for the opposition. The reason for this treachery was an unwelcome message from the Grantchester organiser informing us that they only had seven players, leading several Remnants to heed the call to bolster their numbers, the end result of which was to once again demonstrate that no good deed goes unpunished.
We actually started well as Daniel Mortlock (2/20) and Naveen Chouksey (1/26) reduced Grantchester to 11/3 in the 3rd (six-ball) over. Such apparent dominance was, however, an illusion, as the wickets didn't include either of Grantchester's two proper batters ("AP" and Hume), both of whom made it to the retirement score of 40. This was largely the result of good batting, particularly the punishment of our numerous full tosses - although even more critical was that we gave both of them lives, with a total of five catches going to ground. None of these chances were easy - most were off flat, hard hit drives - but they were all catches most of us would expect to be taken more often than not. The most frustrating to watch was when Grantchester's top scorer got a top edge which could have been caught by either Lahiru Wijedasa at gully or Naveen at point, both of whom moved silently towards each other while the rest of the team was screaming for one of them to call. The most amusing (which wasn't actually a genuine chance) was when Tom Serby at square-leg saw that a mis-hit was going to go over his head and so turned around, presumably with the intention of attempting an "over the shoulder" catch; but he then lost both sight of the ball and his footing, with the result that he ended cowering on the ground while trying to protect himself from the possibility of the ball landing on his head. Still, we did take wickets, as Iqtedar Alam (1/18), Andy Owen (2/18) and Tim "Simmons" Simmance (3/31) all made breathroughs by simply bowling straight - although the dismissals were actually beneficial to Grantchester, as it meant their weaker batters didn't saok up too many balls - and, in fact, allowed the late-arriving Hume to have an impact from number 9 and then AP to come back in to finish the innings with a four and a two to take him to a quality half-century.
Given that we also had a bowler-heavy side, a successful chase was going to require our top order to play big innings . . . a hope which was dashed in the first over when Saurav Dutta (2 off 4 balls) smashed a full toss straight to mid-off, where Hume took the safest of catches. From there on it was all pretty atritional: we didn't score more than 5 runs off any over until the 9th (and even that required a no ball); and none of our batters managed a strike-rate above 85.00. Martin Heginbotham (14 off 17 balls) went closest, leaving James Robinson (23 off 33 balls), Quentin Harmer (19 off 27 balls) and Andy Owen (15* off 27 balls) to have what amounted to an extended net session. There were at least some amusements, primarily stemming from what appeared to be a team-level decision to replace verball calling with telepathy. The main victim of this failed experiment was Quentin, who repeatedly ended up sprawled on the ground, including after his eventual demise, run out in the final over. That left Naveen to come in as non-striker with one ball left, hence condemned to join the list of Remnants players who've batted without facing a ball.
