An unusual Friday game for Remnants, and the second return match of the season (after the game against the Globe earlier in the week) with the nattily-attired Woozlers returning to Fitz eager for revenge.
We batted first, and amassed our first big score of the summer (although for the most part we've been batting second, and so not had the chance to scale the heights of 150+ totals). The stars were Nick Clarke, whose 38 was -- as ever -- made up almost totally of boundaries, today's captain, Phil Watson, with 28, and Faruk Kara. He hit a very stylish 60*, scoring all 'round the ground, and getting the highest score for the club so far this season. At one stage we looked like getting closer to 200, but the beast that is the Remnants batting line-up is clearly just stretching its muscles at this stage of the season.
And sub-optimal scoring was not too important, as it quickly became apparent that Woozlers were unlikely to threaten our target, the first few overs by Rupert Brown (2/10) and Russell Woolf (1/23) yielding very few runs.
The highlight was a ball skied off Woolfie that could have been caught by either Rupert at point or Geoff Hales behind the stumps. But, as you've probably gathered, it wasn't caught at all -- from Geoff's point of view the ball was right in the sun and from Rupert's point of view it was obviously Geoff's catch. Meanwhile, the non-striker (correctly) called for a single whilst the striker merely wandered out of his crease, hypnotised by the ball's slow arc. They -- and the ball -- all ended up at the striker's end, but somehow there was no run out, and the game went on as if nothing had happened.
However things quickly became less light-hearted as the Woozlers captain set about smashing a very quick 63*, with a few glorious boundaries and a large number of quick singles. The major effect of this was to induce an inordinate amount of fielding errors on our (and mainly my) part. There were overthrows, casual fielding that allowed twos that weren't there, errors on the boundary, dropped catches and so on. In the end the Woozlers were about two overs' worth of runs short, and Phil Watson managed to finish the game in ``style'', getting a wicket with a delivery that went almost as high as the above-mentioned chance.