Report by Daniel Mortlock:
Today we, like the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica, had a plan: start early to get a full-length game; bat first to make the best use of our gun top order; then use our accurate seamers from the end with the short leg-side boundary; and finally, after the change of ends, give our slower bowlers the protection of the big leg-side boundary. Sadly, just as that initially excellent series (the 2000s reboot, not the late '70s original) descended into a mess of repetitive catch-phrases and inexplicable Bob Dylan references, our plans were soon revealed to be worth less than the paper they hadn't been written on.
The first failure was the attempted 5:30pm start. Fourteen players had made it to Fitz at this time, which was a good effort . . . but useless in practice as it was seven from each side. We soon made it up to ten, so volunteered to bowl first in a 12x8s game with just one change of ends - we probably could have gone for 14 overs, but were a bit spooked by the low, grey clouds. We were playing on the most distant wicket, no more than 30 metres from the square boundary, so the obvious thing was to start with the faster bowlers from the north end, allowing the slower bowlers to come on from the south with the protection of the wide open spaces in front of the pavilion on the leg side. The only problem was that we started bowling from the south end purely out of habit, and it wasn't until two overs in that Daniel realised his error.
Monish Thorat hence saw several good balls outside off-stump cut to the short boundary that would have been singles if he'd been bowling from other end . . . although that didn't stop him coming away with tidy figures of 2/13, the wickets coming thanks to a good catch by 'keeper Neil Grover and then a superb return catch by Monish when one of the Dobblers' best batters smashed a drive straight back at him. With Daniel Mortlock (2/5) also bagging a pair of early wickets, we'd reduced the Dobblers to 4/15, perhaps suggesting the erroneous choice of ends wasn't going to be the deciding factor.
After that frenetic start things rather calmed down as John Moore (0/22), Danny Evetts (0/9, including a rare eight-ball maiden) and Sahais Sumit (2/6) and Rohan (1/16) all kept the batters under control - despite some pretty shoddy fielding, with the ball repeatedly going between the legs of our fielders and a few simple catches going down. The only real exception to all was "Jag", who not only scored freely but also helped out his less experienced team mates with cricketing tutorials between most deliveries - or, in one case, while a particularly parabolic ball from John was still making its way to the batter, there being sufficient time for Jag as non-striker to actually instruct the batter on what sort of shot to play. (Is this even allowed in the Laws?)
The main problem by this stage was that we weren't going to have much to chase (even accounting for the ultra-short format), something which the batters seemed to realise as well - getting the now retired Jag back in was the only plausible explanation for pushing the ball straight to Daniel at short cover and going for such a hopeless run that even a fumbled pick-up and off-line throw weren't enough to prevent Neil completing an easy run out. Sure enough, Jag came back out and immediately smashed a big six . . . which really meant there was no explanation for his partner then pushing the ball straight to Daniel at short cover and going for such a hopeless run that even a fumbled pick-up and off-line throw weren't enough to prevent Neil completing an easy run out. If Jag had gotten one more over with access to the short boundary we might have been chasing close to 100; as it was the Dobblers made a surely uncompetitive 74. (While targets this low have been successfully defended nine times in Remnants games, they were all last century and mostly from the 1980s.)
The slightly wild vibe continued into our innings, at least initially, as Lahiru Wijedasa began by poking a cut to point, where he should have been caught, and then hit the ball straight to the square-leg fielder and set off for a crazy run before Cam Petrie sent him back. Things then calmed down, although possibly a bit too much, as The Dobblers' sharp opening attack largely restricted Lahiru and Cam to deflections and scampered singles - Dave Green decided to stay until we hit a boundary, which didn't happen until the fourth over, significantly delaying Dave's supper. But then the shackles were decisively broken as Lahiru (33* off 29 balls) raced to retirement and Cam (28 off 23 balls) seemed to be heading the same way until the 'keeper's suggestion that he "finish the game with a six" got into his head. Cam's replacement, Hume Fisher (2* off 2 balls), tried to do the same off his first ball and was lucky not to be caught, after which John Young (3* off 11 balls) completed our 9-wicket victory in much calmer fashion.
It was a decidedly strange game - it lasted just 155 deliveries, not much longer than a standard 20-over innings - and only Lahiru and Cam got more than 16 balls as anything other than a fielder or spectator; such is late-August evening cricket.