Today was the fourth in the longest of long weekends and, whilst this may have given most of the country an excuse to relax in honour of the Queen's Jubilee, no-one had thought too hard about the implications for Remnants CC. The absence of many of our regulars meant that today's team had a ``nine men and a dog'' feel to it according to Sally, although it's not clear who she was identifying as the tenth member of this group. The fact that today was a bank holiday led to a start time of 4pm and 30 overs per innings rather than the usual 20, although the more astute amongst you will have already noticed that our score would only have struggled to cut the mustard in the shorter form of the game.
Hart-McLeod batted first, and it soon became clear that Graham Hart (ex-Remnants captain) had turned against his old team, bringing in some ``extra-curricular'' talent to augment his company's line-up. We bowled pretty well, with Rupert Brown (1/26) and Robin Woolley (in his first spell for us) taking what honours there were to be taken, but the batting was just a bit good, and Hart-McLeod coasted along to 205/5 at around 7 runs an over.
With a full team we might have had a shot at this imposing target, but as things were it seemed a bit unlikely. When Hart-McLeod started bowling very tight and pretty fast, it became very unlikely, although there was some hope with Phil Watson (24) and Tony Malik (23) sharing a good second wicket partnership. In the end we fell well short -- it's been pretty rare that we've lost by over 100 runs in the short form of cricket we play, but that's exactly what happened today. We can only hope for rain tomorrow and a chance to lick our wounds before next week's games.