Report by Daniel Mortlock:
An overcast and sweaty Sunday saw the more astute Remnants players lounging in the backyard with a beer; the more foolish of our ranks dragged themselves over to Fitzwilliam to play Hockerill College in the year's only 40-over a side game. Hockerhill was where Paul Jordan did his teacher training, and so once again we were playing one of our own. However what we could have done with was more of our own playing for us: we had just seven regular players, a ringer in the form of opening bowler Simon Henson, young Alexander Brown (Rupert's son) and, for about half an hour, a passing Andy Owen (in non regulation denim cricket blues). Hockerill was also undermanned, but their two ringers were slightly better than ours, one in particular was more in the Dave Norman league of brutal hitting and scarily fast bowling. He took 2/10 and then made 61* and things might have been reasonably close in his absence. In his presence they weren't close at all.
We batted first and looked to be making a steady start, with Ev Fox (23), Dave Rowson (25) and Rich Savage (15) all getting in. There followed a middle order collapse which saw us plunge to 80/7 or thereabouts, with only Alexander Brown left to come in. It was at this point that Mr Owen came along, so Ev played child-minder for ten minutes while Andy scored a quick 11 before - much to his chagrin, no doubt - being bowled by Paul Jordan. We were now in triple figures, but the resurgance wasn't over yet. While Simon Henson (10) scored more valuable runs, Alexander defied the fearsome Hockerill attack for five overs, gaining a creditable 4* in the process. We were still behind in the game, but at least a target of 129 would make the game more than a formality.
After tea (and much ill-informed and jealous commentary on the rigors of being a camerman at a female athletics meeting) we came out determined to go through the Hockerill batting line-up like a bad curry. And it seemed quite a possibility after the first over, in which Rich Savage (1/27) bowled one of the Hockerill openers. However this brought the above-mentioned ringer to the crease, and he looked completely at home against medium pace bowling. So, captain Rowson turned to the spinners, Daniel Mortlock (1/25) and Les Collings (0/31), and . . . well, he looked pretty comfortable batting against them too, despite surviving a few close LBW appeals and being dropped off one of the highest drives any of us had ever seen. When he eventually retired on 61* Hockerill only needed 30 more to win, although there were brief hopes of a collapse when his replacement miscued a drive off Rupert Brown (1/18) and was caught at long on. Sadly the rest of the game was wicket-free, and all that was left to do was let the air out of the oppositions' tyres.