Report by Daniel Mortlock:
The Oxford English Dictionary defines cricket as "an outdoor game played [. . .] between two teams . . .", which implies that its compilers were unaware of this evening's match, which involved three evenly-matched combatants: Remnants; Sharks; and the Weather. The latter dominated initially, with our WhatsApp group filling up with nervous messages such as "Forecast is not looking good.", "Showers on and off for rest of the day." and "Looks as though rain is due again between now and 5pm, but not thereafter", before a more definite announcement at 5pm that there "Hasn't really been more than a few spots of rain since that storm at around 2pm, so game is on."
The scene at the ground half an hour later was, while not exactly apocalyptic, not the sort summer's evening we all fantasise about in the off season. The sky was grey, the ground was damp and the wind was cold - although evidently not as strong as it had been earlier in the day, judging by the state of the scoreboard.
Of more immediate operational importance, there was the small matter of the tarpaulin over the wicket - no rolling covers at Fitz these days - which had done its job, but only at the cost of now being pooled with lots of water. So, as in most of history's three-way conflicts, victory was won by forming an alliance against a mutual enemy, in this case by players from both sides acting as sort-of pallbearers to delicately slide the tarp off the ground without the water coming off. With the battle against the weather won, we could finally - it was now well after 6pm - get on with some cricket, in the form of the now seemingly standard 14x8s double-ender (available at all good sex shops).
Fielding first, we started brilliantly as Qaiser Ahmed (2/4) combined pace, accuaracy, late outswing, and a steady determination to get 'keeper Andy Owen not to stand up to the stumps, a policy that was vindicated when Andy held onto an outside edge that he almost certainly wouldn't have taken in his preferred position. With Naveen Chouksey (0/31) also starting well the Sharks were just 9/2 after 3 overs.
That we weren't going to maintain our near-perfect performance up to this point first became apparent when two of our better fielders, Cam Petrie and James Robinson, followed up excellent stops with bizarrely wayward throws, the ball tumbling off in unexpected directions almost as they were using their non-throwing arms. And then we started bowling a bit too short and wide too, allowing the batters far too many balls they could safely swing at; with the exception of Qaiser every bowler went for at least 10 an over. That said, Quentin Harmer (2/30) bamboozled the batters more often than not, most dramatically when one effectively gave up on normal cricket and came charging down the pitch, thus presenting Andy with what would have been a comfortable stumping were it not for the fact that, once he realised he'd missed the ball, the batter almost had time to beat it back to the crease. Given how much Quentin seemed to have the upper hand it was galling that, in the end, he got hit as much as all the other bowlers - and also literally when Sasha Vail's lobbed the ball back to him when he wasn't looking, only for Quentin to turn around at the wrong moment and get hit in the lip. Quentin wasn't seriously hurt but there was quite a lot of blood and he was forced to leave the field to ensure that his whites didn't become reds. With one over to go Sharks were on an annoyingly decent 130/4, so captain Daniel Mortlock with the idea of preventing a blow-out with some disciplined death bowling - which was almost exactly what didn't happen: 22 runs came from what was the most expensive over of the innings; Daniel finished with his worst ever Remnants bowling figures (which can be reported here due to space limitations); and the Sharks were undoubtedly favourites with their final total of 152/4 (at least in the convention two-team sense; Weather was not out of contention).
Now faced with a suitably challenging target, our top order was freed up to play with a Bazball-like clarity, as Stu Cronin (20 off 9 balls), Cam Petrie (35* retired off 20 balls) and Tom Serby (32* retired off 16 balls) between them hit 14 of the 45 balls they faced to - or over - the boundary. Mid-way through the 5th over we were already half-way to our target; and, one ball after the change of ends, we were on 99/2 after just 7.1 overs . . .
. . . at which point the Sharks cleverly formed a new alliance with the Weather, which obliged them with a sudden burst of rain which drove the players from the field and the covers back on. It would have been easy to have headed home at this point - it was also very dark - but there seemed to be a tacit argeemenent there was some chance of a resumption. And, sure enough, we were back out again after only ten minutes.
During the break we'd swapped to a pink ball, which seemed to have an immediate effect, in so much as our batters could barely get it off the square. Where we'd smashed 99 runs from the first 57 balls of our innings, we managed just 10 runs from the first 19 balls after the break, including a most unwelcome sequence of ten dot balls. And what runs we did manage were mostly in the form of scampered singles - although that's perhaps not the correct verb as Andy (12 off 17 balls) was speed-limited by his chronically dodgy knee and James Robinson (23 off 27 balls) was comparably restricted by his choice of underwear, not because it was too tight but because it was too loose to keep his box in place (presumably not a chronic issue). James's dismissal - not run out, unfortunately - left us on 120/3 with 29 balls to score 33 runs, a seriously challenging proposition given the conditions . . .
. . . at which point the Weather revealed itself to have taken lessons in loyalty from Boris Johnson, and now delivered the rain we needed to rescue a draw. This time, however, we didn't even have time to get to the tarp, let along bring it out, and play resumed after only only a few minutes.
As the game reached its tense conclusion it seemed the deciding factor was that the Sharks slower bowlers (various members of the Sahai family) had used up their allocations and they were forced to turn to their seamers, who were pretty stiff after all the standing around. Qaiser Ahmed (14* off 10 balls, confirming his non-existent "player of the match" award) hit two vital boundaries in the penultimate over, which from a post-game examination of the scoresheet seemed to have had an extra ninth delivery, which was a (non-contraversial) leg-side wide which brought the scores level. This put Daniel (3* off 3 balls at this stage) on strike with the chance to complete the redemption arc he'd engineered an hour earlier - remember, we would already have won if not for his final over blow-out. At this point we take up ball-by-ball commentary courtesy of, for the first time in club history, a live video feed:
