After the high of last night's silver anniversary shenanigans it was inevitable that today's match against UCLES would be something of a let-down, but, given that the last game between the two sides ended in a tie, it seemed quite possible that some good cricket would ensue. Sadly it didn't -- with the exception of one or two innings on either side and a few fielding efforts nothing much inspirational happened, although that's not to say that the game wasn't entertaining . . .
It all started with George Speller aiming a few full tosses at the UCLES openers' heads (or buttocks in one case) before settling down to produce the day's best bowling spell (1/15 off 4 overs). At the other end Daniel Mortlock dropped a simple caught and bowled chance only for the batsmen to be well caught at mid-off by John Young the next ball. Nothing lost you might think, except that the ball somehow dislocated one of John's fingers and ripped the skin open for good measure. So captain Dave Rowson drove him off to hospital (from which John has since been discharged, very much on the mend), leaving us two fielders short. Geoff Hales filled one of the gaps, patrolling the point area in his customary panther-like fashion; the other was filled by the recently dismissed UCLES opener whose next contribution to the game was to run out one of his team-mates with a direct hit. It was about now that things really started to go haywire -- the bowlers put in too many short balls, allowing UCLES's Australian import to hook lots of boundaries . . . and the fielders started to experiment with all sorts of multiple overthrow combinations. In the end it was a relief when someone just held onto the ball. The bowling figures suffered due to all this, with Phil Marshall probably coming off best with 1/19, the "1" being down to a great piece of work by Andy Owen standing up to the stumps. But UCLES had scored very freely towards the end of the innings, the last ten overs yielding over 80 runs, giving us a target of 133 for victory.
Scoring at a run rate of about 6.6 could have been quite a task, but it was clear for the first few overs that we were going to win and win easily. In an opening partnership that yielded 80-odd off the first 9 overs, Nick Clarke smashed a brutal 66* and Andy Owen made an equally rapid 34 dominated by clever deflections to the square boundaries. It only took two overs of this onslaught for UCLES to become completely demoralised, with even more misfields and overthrows than we allowed. Even after Andy was well caught on the boundary the run-rate never dropped below 8 an over with Tony Malik (16*) joining Nick to finish off the game.
So that was that -- all a bit silly really, but nothing that couldn't be put right with a few pints at the bar . . . except for the fact that Dave Norman was away, leaving us to wander aimlessly into the night.