Report by Daniel Mortlock:
Today we had a battle of innocence (young Remnants team being led uncertainly by an antipodean captain yet to record a win as captain) versus experience (team of gnarled warriors being led by a sometimes Remnants captain who's won more matches than he could hope to count). Guess which came out on top.
Our innings seemed likely to settle into the well-worn groove of a big partnership between Nev Fidler (an excellent 27) and Nick Clarke (19), but their dismissals led to a horrendous middle order collapse that saw six of our batsmen dismissed for scores of 2 or lower. George Speller (16) and Robin Woolley (16*) hit out sufficiently well to get us into triple figures but overall it was a rather sorry performance, the side being all out with more than two overs still remaining an a rather puny total of 112.
Nonetheless, we took to the field with a steely determination to make the opposition fight for every run, and fight they had to. George Speller (0/9) bowled with pace and beat the bat countless times (okay, about ten, but still) whilst Phil Marshall (4/16, the season's second best return) managed to remove most of the opposition's top order by forcing the batsmen onto the back foot and inducing some rash strokes across the line. After eight overs Philanderers had limped to 32/5 and it seemed we were well on the way to a stirring victory. The whole team was performing brilliantly: Mike Scanlon used his wicket keeper's perogative to push aside a lot of competition in chasing down a top edge; Anton Garrett made yet another claim for catch of the season; Rich Savage held onto a skyer, safe in the knowledge that Nev was out of range; Robin Woolley and Nick Clarke (helped by some excellent calling) completed a double-team run out; Dave Green let nothing past on the short square boundary; and so on and so on. If we could have just dismissed Phil Watson then the game would have been ours . . .
. . . but without sufficiently many runs on the board to force the batsmen to take risks Phil and two of his trusted Girton right-hand men played themselves in and then put our fielding under pressure by running a succession of rude singles. The bowling remained pretty good, with Daniel Mortlock (0/18) and Robin Woolley (1/28) unlucky to have just the one wicket between them, but it was during this passage of play that the batsmen's experience really told and we did a few silly things. Our fielding started to fall apart a little, with overthrows (where earlier it always seemed there were two people backing up) and dropped chances (where earlier we were snaffling everything) coming at what seemed to be an ever-increasing rate.
It fell to Mike Jones (0/17) and Anton (0/12) to bowl the last four overs, but keeping the batsmen to less than a run a ball was never likely, and once again the skyed shots fell tantalisingly beyond the fielders' reach. Most of us walked from the field feeling pretty frustrated, but one tall furry creature trudged off with a wry smile that said he'd seen it all before.