Having beaten Granta earlier in the year there was little question that they would put out a stronger team for today's return match . . .
. . . not that this appeared to be the case when we had them struggling at 66/6 after 13 overs. This happy state of affairs was largely down to some good bowling -- Guy Wiedermann (2/13), Daniel Mortlock (2/33) and Russell Woolf (3/19) all got amongst the wickets, and Julius Rix (0/14) was unlucky not to. And for once we took our chances in the field: Daniel, Julius and Ollie Clarke (Nick's young son, on Remnants debut) all took great outfield catches and Dave Williams completed a superb stumping. With two overs to go our opposition were still languishing in double figures, and I was sufficiently confident to tell Nick that it would take ``a real fuck up'' to lose it from here. When the next two deliveries were hit for a six and a four he gently asked if that was the sort of thing I meant, to which I replied ``not yet''. In the end, though, the final two overs cost us 33 runs and Granta suddenly had a respectable total to defend . . .
. . . and boy did they. Two properly quick (at least by our standards) bowlers saw to it that only 20-odd runs came off the first seven overs, and a combination of excellent catching and accurate throwing ensured a steady flow of wickets. The only two batsmen to get into double figures were Nick Clarke (11) and Daniel Mortlock (30), but at no stage did we mount anything that might be termed a run chase.
As has been the case several times this year we spent the second half of the innings just batting out time. There were a few highlights -- Ollie Clarke getting his first Remnants run and Russell Woolf smashing a fine boundary off the last ball of the innings -- but in the end we were lucky to last the 20 overs, and our total of 72/9 was nothing to be proud of.
