Report by Tom Serby:
Everything's looking good shortly before six at CUPA; a very warm and sunny Tuesday evening - just cool enough now to venture out in unlike earlier in the afternoon, lovely landscaped grounds ringed by attractive trees, spacious bar with live cricket on the telly, decent changing rooms adding to the general feel of University bankrolled opulence, usual smattering of spectators - good to have the injured and soon to be Middle East returning Everton Fox on hand, two fullish teams eager to do battle, agreement to play 16 six-ball overs (8 from each end); what could possibly go wrong? What about the wicket?
From the first balls of the first over faced by Remnants openers Temoor Khan and Tom Serby it seems we have a problem. CUPA's initial solution to the dangerously unpredictable steep bounce was to keep wanging the ball in faster and shorter, which meant byes, snicks off the gloves and edges and boundaries galore. Thus the first over went for 19, including 8 extras (mainly wides; one no-ball) including two lovely hits down the ground from TK. The second over saw the flip side, TK caught behind to one of those nasty rising deliveries. "Fight or flight" mode from the helmetless Tom (30* retired off 18 balls) led to uber adventure and the high strike rate became a benchmark for all the batters, hardly surprising as the middle order comprised of Martin Heginbotham (35* retired off 15 balls, the perfect answer to compulsory retirement on 30) and Matthew Doel (33* retired off 24 balls), who in the general buccaneering hit three and two sixes respectively. James Robinson undone like TK, caught behind to an unplayable lifter. Target then 170 off 16 overs for CUPA.
Cue captain TK's somewhat wilier strategy for the wicket conditions. Tossed up deliveries - the slower the better - and what a team of experts to put this into effect. Faruk Kara (once he managed to land the ball), first four deliveries of CUPA's response, keeping up with run rate but not so sure on wickets: 6 3 W W. Faruk's final figures 4/39 off four - he should have been a "five for", but a great stumping appeal effected by Martin was turned down. [Had the stumping been given it would have been the most expensive five-for in club history rather than the second most expensive four-for, just behind Martyn Waterfall's eventful three-over spell of 4/46 back in 1993 - ed.] At the other end Lahiru Wijedasa (1/13 off 3) went more for line and length bowling, putting a strangle on the run rate and upping the pressure to score. And then the master, John Moore (2/29 off 3), in conditions made for him, including a collector's item of a delivery so tossed up that having beaten the batter's violent lunge, we waited patiently to see whether the ball would eventually travel as far as the stumps and dislodge the bails - it did. Taha Ahsan and Quentin Harmer, though wicketless kept up the sustained barrage of slow flighted deliveries; so when Matthew and TK (2/4 off his one over, which could have been a double wicket maiden but for an unfortunate mis-field) finished it off the game was already up, too much even for the returning retiree J. Jackson, whose personal strike rate of 235.71 with two sixes, narrowly failed to better his opening partner's strike rate of 300.00 (from Faruk's first over).
So a comfortable win against a strong CUPA team, even if ball magnet Matty Wills' wish to field somewhere out of the way where he could protected his dodgy digit was unwittingly frustrated, two great catches in the deep, and lots of runs saved by his inspired haring after the ball.
Report by Cambridge Assessment (via Instagram):
The history of sport is littered with fairytales. Liverpool winning the 2005 Champions League Final after finding themselves 3-0 down at half-time. Tiger Woods winning the 2019 Masters, after 11 years without a major and numerous personal and injury struggles. An 18-year-old Emma Raducanu qualifying for, and then winning, the 2021 US Open without dropping a set.
And what of our sport, glorious cricket? India won the 1983 Cricket World Cup against all odds, Kapil Dev's side seeing off the all-conquering West Indies. Ben Stokes at Headingley in 2019, a hopeless situation rescued. Perhaps most fittingly in this context, though, is Alastair Cook's final innings for England, scoring 147, his first century in over a year, and helping the team to a huge win,
And go to the Cass Centre, 12 August 2025. After 13 seasons as captain and a trophy haul that stands at 11, Andi Thwaites was stepping down as Cambridge University Press and Assessment captain. This was to be his last hurrah, a home friendly against Remnants.
The team had beaten all-comers again this season and came into the game having not lost a completed match since July 2023. Their record at the Cass Centre is believed to be unblemished. Surely this was going to be the most fitting of send-offs.
As has been the way in recent friendlies, Thwaites asked the Remnants captain what his preference would be rather than tossing a coin. Unsurprisingly, given the heat, he chose to bat. Things got off to an awful start as Alex Heaton lobbed down a wide that scurried away for four, and the Biue Caps' fielding effort didn't really pick up much from that point.
Regular lusty hitting and sporadically awful fielding saw the game slip completely away from a flat-looking home side. Perhaps it was the heat, but whatever the cause, you'd be hard pushed to remember a more lacklustre display in the field in all 13 years of Thwaites' tenure.
Credit, of course, must go to the visitors, who made the most of some charitable bowling and fielding, but did not let up in the face of such generosity, ensuring the pressure remained firmly on the hosts throughout the 16-over innings. There were moments of inspiration: a steepling catch by the skipper himself; Owayne lese turning into prime Peter Schmeichel to stop a certain boundary; and John Page pouching a remarkable ankle-height catch with complete nonchalance. But these were very much the exception rather than the rule, as Remnants piled on 169 in their innings.
The brilliant thing about cricket is that no matter how poor you are in one aspect of the game, you always have another chance to put it right. In Doyl D'Silva and Julius Jackson, the Blue Caps have two feared hitters at the top of the order, and when nine runs were plundered from the first two balls of the reply, the game looked on. Sadly, D'Silva was superbly caught from the third ball, and the innings somewhat subsided.
Jackson carried on, racing to 33 from 13 balls before retiring, but wickets continued to fall around him. Antony King Bright (32*) combined with John Page (20) for a 47-run partnership, but the required rate was heading skywards. When Thwaites himself came to the crease, rather embarrassingly, through eight guard of honour from his teammates, the last rites had been all but administered.
Thwaites did at least put in a credible showing, finishing 21* from just 13 balls and reminding one or two that he does have some cricketing ability. With the game gone, the hope was that he would at least be able to close the innings alongside one of his best mates and trusty sidekick, Guy Nicholson, but, as with the rest of the evening, the cricketing gods had other ideas, and Nicholson departed before the end.
The Blue Caps closed on 135/9, falling 35 runs short of victory, a margin much narrower than it looked like being at various points in the evening. Given the long unbeaten run, and the visitors' desperation for a win, this poor evening at the office can be forgiven. Unfortunately for the departing skipper, the evening proved to be more Jean van de Velde in 1999 than Tiger Woods in 2019, more Ben Stokes in 2016 than Ben Stokes in 2019. The fairytale finish for the departing captain was simply not to be.
But, given that his first game for the club in 2009 was a shelacking, and the team's performance was described in the match report as "stinking as bad as a slice of my Nan's tuna and Stilton surprise", perhaps this was the finish the gods had in mind, things had come full circle, a neat end to a hell of a stint.