At the pub after this evening's game it was revealed that the Trinity College High Table (TCHT) organisers considered the internal game at Trinity on July 2 to be a victory for them over Remnants, despite the fact that they only had two non-Remnants in "their" side. So, with the acausal motivation of righting the injustice of a stolen win, there was going to be no quarter given this evening - we were going to give the lecturers a lesson.
Our first victory was winning the toss when THCH captain Cam Petrie called incorrectly - his shoulders visibly slumped when, predictably, he was informed that we would be batting first. Still, THHC began well, as tight bowling from Iqtedar Alam and Ben Stone (their one genuine Remnants ringer this evening) allowed our openers James Robinson and Lahiru Wijedasa just 9 runs off the first 2 (eight-ball) overs. Lahiru (3 off 3 balls) was also dismissed during this passage of play when he and James went for a second run to a fielder who didn't look particularly likely to throw down the stumps . . . and, well, you know the rest. James (35* off 32 balls) at least put this behind him as he powered to retirement, hitting huge six to take him to the maximum possible score. Kanwar Singh (30* off 16 balls) and Martin Heginbotham (30* off 22 balls) raced to retirement even faster, taking us past the hundred mark in the 10th over without any further wickets. We then suffered a bit of a collapse, as only Matty Wills (15 off 8 balls) and Ev Fox (11 off 9 balls) even made it to double figures after this early onslaught. Not that it really mattered, though, as our final score of 157/5 was surely enough in a retirements game.
HTHC did at least give the chase a real crack, sprinting out of the blocks to be 33/0 after 3 overs (50% better than us at the same stage) and scoring at around 9 an over for the entirety of their innings. The only problem from their point of view was that they were also losing wickets at the rate of about one an over - it was a truly frenetic hour's cricket - and in the end we dismissed them with 35 balls still to be bowled. The key passage of play was a three ball sequence in which Joe White (2/21) bowled both TTCC's openers and effectively decided the result in our favour. Matty Wills (2/11) then also doubled up - although his second wicket off a rank half-tracker was really down to brilliant 'keeping by Ev, who stayed low to take a bottom edge. James R. also did well on the catching stakes, holding two in the outfield, the second of which was the other key moment: Ben dismissed first ball. This was off the bowling of James A., playing his first match for Remnants, who blew off the cobwebs of a decade with no cricket to claim figures of 3/3, the fifth best debut bowling effort for Remnants). There was a brief scare when TTHH's number six came in and started his innings with five consecutive fours off Tim Simmance - it seemed we were just three balls away from the "perfect" one-over ininings of 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 and retire - but Tim (1/22) came back superbly to have him LBW. After that it was a case of having some fun as we drew inspiration from the 1932-33 "Bodyline" series, as captain Daniel "Jardine" Mortlock moved more and more fielders into a leg-side ring and instructing John "Larwood" Moore (2/12) to, er, well bowl as normal really. The tactic worked absurdly well as John's wickets both came from catches in the ring: the first was pulled straight to an understandably delighted Daniel at backward square-leg; and the second, which ended the match, was well caught by James A. at a close mid-wicket. The batter seemed happy to join in the theatre of it all with a pantomime toss of the bat . . . only for it to quickly become clear was genuinely livid, cursing his "fucking bat" which was, apparently, "like a fucking railway sleeper". Fortunately he soon calmed down and joined the now standard combinatoric hand-shake ritual, after which several members of both teams headed off to The Castle to close the time loop on this game.