Report by Daniel Mortlock:
At Coton this evening we witnessed an act of futility the likes of which even '90s England cricket supporters never experienced: Faruk had decided to record the Spain vs. France World Cup semi-final in the hope of watching it as-live, and so was desperate to avoid getting any score updates. Back in the '90s this might have been plausible; but with the possibility of watching the game pitch-side on a mobile phone it was surely impossible.
Coming to the actual cricket, we were asked to bowl first - Daniel lost the toss for the first time in a month as the Coton skipper used his own coin - although we might have taken this option anyway given that the pitch was emerald green (in contrast to the outfield, which was a pale yellow). Our opening bowlers made good use of the new ball, "Kasier" Ahmed (0/16) once again unlucky - about half the runs off his bowling came off edges - and Daniel "Mortlak" (3/14) comparably lucky to have one of the batters shoulder arms to a full ball on a leg-stump line which then seamed such that it would have hit half-way up middle. After 4 (eight-ball) overs Coton were just 20/2 and we were in complete control of the game . . .
. . . until just 4 overs later they'd more than quadrupled their score to be 81/4 after 8 overs. This was mainly due to some rather wayward bowling from a couple of bowlers coming back after breaks: "Farua" Kara (1/30), who'd been out with a foot injury since June; and Imran Mubashir (0/24), making his Remnants debut after a decade out of cricket. The basic problem was that anything short or wide - or short and wide - stopped somewhat on the wicket leaving the batters to effectively play tee-ball. There's only so many times the suggesetion of "full and straight" can be made - if it's not happening, it's not happening.
Fortunately, we had a wealth of bowling (and batting) options today and we found the right people to wrest back control in the last half of Coton's innings, Seb "Amersley" (1/22), Sujay Iyer (1/7) and, particularly, "Prishant" Simlai (3/12) all being both economical and penetrative. The only problem during this period was time: each wicket induced a lengthy delay as pads and umpires were swapped; and what runs were scored seemed mainly to be in the form of boundaries which left the ball undetectable in the dense thickets of vegetation (some of it poisonous!) surrounding the ground. The innings ended with the sort of village cricket mayhem that ends up on YouTube when the batter came forward for a big hoik and missed the ball, after which 'keeper James Robinson couldn't complete the sharp stumping chance; but then the batters went for a rather, er, optimistic run and were both mid-pitch when James broke the stumps. No doubt that it was no score and a wicket, but of what sort was less clear - was it the first ever case of the non-striker being stumped? Sadly not: once the striker had started attempting to run it was just a bog-standard run out. Coton thus ended their topsy-turvey innings all out for 136.
After a couple of early wickets we got the latest successful union between Yash Verma and James Robinson, who seem to be enjoying a cricketing bromance to revival that between Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham. There were a few early scares, such as when James fended off a ball that jumped off a length and had to watch and wait for the ball to, fortunately, fall just out of the fielder's reach. One of Coton's younger players, all of whom seemed to have been instructed to chirp relentlessly between deliveries, sagely noted "He's going aerial already!" Both James and Yash did eventually settle on this strategy as they scored primarily in boundaries and taking us to 110/2 after 11 overs, meaning we needed just 26 runs from 32 balls with two set batters at the crease . . .
. . . who both then immediately had to retire, first James (40* off 30 balls) and then Yash (41* off 39 balls) just five balls later. From relaxed confidence we were instantly very nervous as our two new batters, Trishant Simlai (4 off 12 balls) and John Young (3* off 8 balls), were faced with having to score from ball one in fading light against Coton's quickest bowlers on a still tricky pitch. This indeed proved too much, as just 8 runs came from the bat in the next three overs - it was thus very fortunate that we were donated 11 runs in wides and no balls. We thus started the final over on 129/3 needing a neat 8 runs from 8 balls:
Phew! That was all a bit tenser than it might have been - rarely have retirements had such a big impact on a game - but highly memorable as a result. Not that anyone hung around - most people wanted to get back home to see the second half of the football, Faruk in particular leaving the ground as quickly as possible . . . albeit not before hearing one of the Coton players shout out that "Spain's one-nil up!"