Report by Daniel Mortlock:
The Computer Laboratory, being our oldest existing opposition, were scheduled into Remnants Week in late June, but the fixture was unfortunately rained off. There was no such danger today, one of the nicest of the summer so far, and Caius's playing fields seemed the perfect venue to lie out on the grass with a beer . . .
. . . and our time in the field seemed to pass by at about half-speed, almost as if everyone had drunk two or three pints already. Everything seemed to be in slow motion, our "fast" bowlers coming in at about half pace and some of the fielders moving around like horse-drawn dirigibles. Three noteable exceptions were Dave Green, Andy Owen and Guy Wiedermann, the poor sods who got the unenviable job of patrolling the loooooong square boundary (Nick swore that he saw a herd of wilderbeast sweeping majestically past extra cover, although this claim remains unconfirmed).
Guy and Andy were also, coincidentally, the most successful bowlers: Guy took 2/14, thus maintaining his single figure season's average; and Andy, supposedly "down on confidence", had the superb return of 4/13. Andy even got a wicket with his "run out of ideas" ball (the one where he runs in from widish mid-off) - the batsmen, having already faced one such delivery, was heard to utter "oh god, not this again" just seconds before he had his middle stump knocked out of the ground. As it happened all our wickets were bowled and, such was the softness of the pitch, a stump was knocked out of the ground on each occasion. I offered a fiver to anyone who could bowl a batsmen whilst leaving all three stumps in place, only to regret my rash offer when Phil Watson came on . . . but fortunately his lobs weren't on line today. That said, his role an unconventional "closer" seems secure at the moment, and today he conceded just 6 runs from his two overs at the death, keeping the total to less than a run per ball.
Previously this season we've faltered when chasing such nominally manageable targets, but today the run chase remained on target from ball one, Daniel Mortlock (34), Ev Fox (21) and Dave Williams (an excellent 27*) all making useful contributions. Daniel and Ev should arguably have "gone on with the it", having clearly made good starts, but it's possible that fatigue was the real problem: the outfield was sufficiently large that our innings included 11 threes and one all-run four, as compared to just 6 boundaries - we certainly did it the hard way today. In the end it fell to Robin Woolley (10*) to finish things off (with yet another three) and so we managed a comfortable victory over a team that has had the edge on us in recent years.
And so it was finally time for the beers mentioned earlier, as well as bonus munchies, by way of a celebreation of the two teams' long history together.