A few weeks ago Girton humiliated us by defending a small total with ease; today was a chance for us to get revenge on what their captain, one Phil Watson, insisted was a "desperately weak side" . . .
. . . which was rapidly revealed to be a lie when it turned out that Girton had ten bowlers who were all at least decent. Our top order struggled, with only Ev Fox (22) and Andy Peel (10) making it into double figures, and we were just 81/4 with 5 overs to go. But then John Gull (33) and Andrew Lea (31) cut loose, scoring 57 off those last 5 overs, swinging the match in our favour. The only downside was that Phil had finished the innings by getting a wicket with his ill-disguised fast ball (the only delivery in his armoury with sufficient pace to remove the bails with any regularity).
The Girton openers looked capable of getting most of the target by themselves, but whilst they coped with the bowling without too much bother, a naff call left both of them stranded mid-pitch and Chris Martin was able to stroll in and complete the easiest of run outs from zero range. Ironically Chris spent the rest of the innings "boundary riding", firing in absurdly fast returns -- to the detriment of both Ev Fox's gloves and Les Collings's hands. Fortunately the latter battering occured after Les, in a welcome return to form, had turned the match back in our favour with a spell of 3/36. With the required rate now more than ten an over it seemed we had another comfortable victory on our hands, but Girton's surviving opener kept his team in the match until he was dismissed for an excellent 55 in the second last over.
In the end the difference between the two teams was probably down to the different captaincy strategies: Phil gave all ten of his outfielders two overs each, but if he had marshalled his forces to maximum effect they would most likely have restricted us to 20 less and won the game. Either way we're now one-all against Watson-tinged sides for the year (and a massive 10-3 up against all comers at the half-way point of the summer).