Report by Tom Serby:
The weather being such a key component for cricketers, as alluded to in an recent match report in some detail, we felt lucky to be evening cricketers as we assembled at Fitz in the May heatwave in the relative late afternoon cool after the punishing heat of earlier in the day which had seen matches in the county being cancelled under the 33+ heat rule. Faruk was not so sanguine, being sure that the very distant clouds on the horizon presaged dire conditions for the team batting second.
St Giles took first knock. Similar to Remnants, St Giles comprised a balance of the old and the new, in their case a balance of prep school and secondary school cricketers, leavened by more experienced men. Their batting partnerships thus presented plenty of opportunities for at the appropriate moment allowing a single. It turned out though that the youngsters, while only five feet or less tall, were very capable. One of the "elders" took first strike and dispatched the first three, very respectable, of Iqtedar Alam's deliveries for 6, 4 and 1. Skipper Joe White, taking the positives, exhorted his bowler mid-over with the encouraging comment that the over was "on the perfect trajectory".
One of the three debutants for Remnants was Sujay Iyer - as in Shreyas Iyer as he told us - modestly adding that, unlike Shreyas, he wasn't really a batter. Taking the second over, the cricket became slightly surreal as Iyer instinctively reacted verbally and loudly to each of his deliveries - before the ball reached the batter - the tone of the shout differentiating between a ball he was respectively very pleased/displeased with, there being very little neutral ground. Taking the ball behind the stumps 'keeper Neil Grover is also given to commentating quite extensively on his efforts, good and not so good, with the gloves. Sometimes good and bad merged as when a fumble created a stumping chance as the ball was inadvertently deflected onto the wicket. A visually impaired onlooker would thus have got a pretty good account of the play at this point. When Remnants' other debutant came to turn his arm over, for the first time the fielding team were on top. Francois Rossouw, with flight and guile, finished with figures of 2/25 off four overs and these could so easily have been better. Another Remnants newcomer, Vikrant Sharma, also bowled tidily and appeared to be having something of a personal duel with Noel of the St Giles middle order, which created a lot of excitement from the combined elder St Giles spectating non-batters (Singh and Dileep) and the Remnants newbies Iyer and Sharma. After 20 overs of this Remnants were set 152 to win.
Commenting subsequently on the uploaded scorecards post match in the Whatsapp chat, Daniel asked "Were we batting under the misguided belief that we could bat out a draw?!?" I can attest that this was not the case - but it was very hard to connect with St Giles opening bowler Jack Hutchinson's quickish balls, delivered as they were often mid-pitch and often very wide of the wicket, frustratingly though not wide enough to be called by Francois as standing umpire (a "bowling" umpire evidently). Realising that the run-rate was becoming a problem my fellow opener Simon Godsill, frustrated by smashing the ball continuously to intercepting bowler/mid-on/mid-off, gave up and retired himself on 12* (off 24 balls). His replacement, Steven Doel was having nothing to do with my kamikaze singles to mid-off, joining Stephen briefly at the bowler's end before walking off, run out for 23 (off 37 balls). [This brought to end the three-player opening stand of 43 runs (good) off 67 balls (bad), one of our slowest known partnerships. - ed.]
By this time the game was up but Stephen (25* off 29 balls) and Joe White (21* off 21 balls) batted out the overs very enetrprisingly and entertainingly with a range of attractive strokeplay, a memorable example of which was Joe's lofted off drive for four.
Faruk's dire prognostications about an impending storm weren't so far off the mark, although I did get home on my bike to Comberton without being rained on and enjoying the lightning display, which is more than be said I suppose of our batting this evening, lost by 51 runs.