Today's game, against a late-arriving Corpus team, started slowly and continued in that vein pretty much to the end.
All the opposition's bowlers were tight, and our run-rate never got much above four an over, despite a longish partnership between Tony Malik (26*) and Andy Owen (14) that one would ordinarily expect to yield at least a run a ball. The highlights were few and far between: Phil Marshall (17) hit successive boundaries with vicious pull shots at the start of the innings, and the last ball was one of the more amusing of the season: an easy single to extra cover became two when the fieldsman failed to pick up the ball cleanly . . . and then he panicked and somehow threw the ball almost straight up in the air allowing a third run. But even this only got us to 85/4.
It was clear that we were going to have to bowl Corpus out to win this match, but with only eight fielders (plus Rob Harvey, who happened to be passing, for the last over) it was just too hard to stop the boundaries. Daniel Mortlock (1/15) and today's captain Tony Malik (1/5) got the only two wickets to fall, but it was too late by then, the Corpus openers (38 and 18) having gotten most of the runs at about 8 an over. The extent of our plight was illustrated by Tony having by far our best batting and bowling figures, despite -- by his own admission -- not really getting into the game.