Report by Daniel Mortlock:
Rather unusually, today's game was previewed by The Guardian, their pre-match assessment of our opponents being that "AstraZeneca should stick to its winning formula. It doesn't need a £400bn US mega-merger." Indeed, judging by recent games, all that's really required to win at Fitz is to bat first, something the AZ captain had the option to do after he called correctly (no magic coin any more) . . . but, astonishingly given the hot and dry conditions, he opted to field.
As puzzing as this decision was, it did actually cause us some problems: we had such a strong "batting unit" that it was difficult to choose an order without disappointing someone. Here TK helped out by responding to the WhatsApp enquiry "Are you close? We are batting." with the decidedly contrite "I'm so sorry, I'm not in Cambridge, I forgot that I was even playing, apologies I can't make it". Ignoring the incorrect use of commas in place of semi-colons, the only effect this had was to move others up the order. Another problem was solved when Hugh Myers was asked to confirm that he'd scored a couple of centuries this season; when it was revealed that this was while opening the batting he was of course told to pad up, safe in the knowledge that this would jinx him and he'd get out quickly and ensure someone else got a go.
Sure enough, Hugh was bowled second ball, bringing in Simon Godsill to join surviving opener Seb Hammersley. AZ bowled well and maintained control for a while, restricting us to a moderate 29/1 after 5 (six-ball) overs, perhaps justifying the decision too field. Soon, though, the runs started to flow every bit as freely as they had in the first innings of every game for the last month (recent totals: 157/5; 177/7; 140/6; 191/7; 175/6; 138). Seb proceeded to retirement as so often this year, his eventual total of 37* (off 26 balls) taking him to 295 at 49.17 for the season, just three runs behind Yash on 298. Indeed, his biggest challenge seemed to come from his own teammates, with Neil, substituting for the opposition, making a fantastic stop to deny a boundary, and Simon mixing a reluctance to call with the occasional super-quick single. For his part, Simon managed an almost perfectly binary innings of . . 1 1 . 1 . 1 1 . 2 1 LB 1 1 1 1 1 1 . 1 + . 1 1 . . . . . . 1 W, his 17 off 30 balls perhaps a tribute to an even longer bit-fest by John Young a few years ago. Our innings then went into a Doel-fuelled overdrive as first Stephen (38* off 24 balls, only one of which was a dot) and then Matthew (35* off just 14 balls) raced to retirement. With good support from Sujay Iyer (18 off 14 balls) we were now in an absolute ascendancy. The icing on the cake was John Moore's cameo of of 5* off 3 balls: having failed to lay bat on his first two deliveries, he nudged his third ball into the off-side and called for a risky single that would have seen him comfortably run out had the throw been accurate; however, not only was the throw off-line, but there was nobody backing up, so we had the very village moment of John and partner Neil (0* off 2 balls) catching their breath while the rest of us were hollering for them to run overthrows . . . only for the ball to eventually cross the distant boundary, taking us to our final total of 175/3.
We were confident we had enough runs to defend, particularly given that retirements would limit the influence of the quality AZ top order even if our bowlers couldn't. What was less clear was whether we had enough time to finish the game - we didn't start the second innings until 7:40pm, meaning we had to go through our bowlers in descending pace order and hope we could beat the sunset.
Our big challenge first up was how to deal with AZ's star batter, Yousuf Choudhary, whose level can be judged by the fact that Wollaston CC considered him such a good signing that they posted an announcment on Instagram. This included an awesome highlights reel of him smashing 80 mph balls to the boundary - fortunately, none of us saw this until after the game. As it was, we bowled pretty well against him: Naveen Chouksey (0/34) largely restricted him to singles, conceding just one boundary (an admittedly enormous six); and Matthew Doel (1/18), who's played with Yousuf in Cambridgeshire age-group teams, also allowed him just one boundary as he peppered both AZ openers with bouncers, one of which was a rare wide for height. When the captain requested he go a bit fuller his response was "But this is more fun!" Still, there was no getting around the fact that AZ were scoring pretty freely: at 52/1 after 6 overs they were right up with the required rate. So it was time for captain Daniel Mortlock to lead from the front and get things under control:
While obviously good to see the back of Choudhary, Shafiq was actually scoring even faster, having raced to 22 off just 10 deliveries, largely by exploiting the pace on the ball. We hence decided to turn to spin, bringing on Sujay Iyer (0/13), who immediately slowed the scoring and hence perhaps induced the second key wicket in consecutive overs: new batter Zaid Ahmed hit the ball to Stephen Doel at mid-off and set off for what most of us felt would be a comfotable single; but Shafiq was ball-watching and hung around in his crease; there was some confusion about which end to throw to, Stephen eventually opting to go to the striker's end, where Neil made a nice take whipped the bails off with Shafiq's bat over the line but in the air. And then Hugh Myers (1/7) started his spell by inducing another edge which Neil, despite standing back, only managed to catch after two rather comical juggles. At the ten-over change of ends AZ were technically still in the game on 83/4, but we were pretty convinced we'd seen off the best batters and now had the long boundary on the leg side.
The only problem was the fast fading light. We had plenty of slow bowlers, whose primary mission became to get through their overs as quickly as possible. Faruk Kara (1/20) and John Moore (1/18) both did the necessary, their wickets coming thanks to catches by Matthew (his third of the day) and Daniel. Daniel also snuck in a speedy over to finish with what were, given his absymsal start, implausibly tidy figures of 3/19, in the process ensuring he'd be the season's top wicket-taker, with 20 - while Iqtedar is only three behind on 17 (at a much better average), he made the fatal mistake of going to India for the rest of the summer.
Even before we switched to a pink ball with a few overs to go - we should have done this sooner - the win was already beyond question, so the conditions didn't unreasonably affect the result. And the only moment of physical danger had nothing do with visibility: when one of the batters decided the best way to play John's "moon balls" he moved to the off-side to pull the ball almost directly behind . . . which was almost straight into Neil's face. Fortunately it missed as, unlike Seb last week, Neil wasn't wearing a lid. Seb (0/6) then got to book-end the game he'd started almost three hours previously, and we ended up comfortable winners by 40 runs.