Report by Daniel Mortlock:
Last night on Lost the writers resorted to the desperate option of having a heavy door, which had been safely propped open open for some time, suddenly fall down at the exact moment a character was sliding underneath it. And yet that absurd coincidence was essentially the same as that which ruined the evenings of some twenty-two Cambridge cricketers this evening. We'd spent all day watching the black sky pregnantly bulging with rain, and yet not a drop fell until we were half-way through our match this evening, from which point it rained continuously until well after sunset. Why couldn't it have poured at, say, 3pm, giving us sufficient time to reclaim our evenings? Why couldn't it have held off for another hour or so to give us time to complete the game?
For what it's worth, Remnants did manage to go within an over of finishing its innings, Phil Hastings (17 off 28 balls), Andrew Lea (9 off 9 balls), Andy Owen (41* off 39 balls) and Sam Dolan (14 off 17 balls) combining to have us 100/4 after 13 eight-ball overs. Andy in particular seemed to have rediscovered his form that saw him score 1117 runs at 111.7 between 2002 and 2004, repeatedly coming down the track to flip the ball over the leg-side field with contemptuous ease. And in Phil and Sam he found willing running partners, the rest of the score coming in stolen singles (and a dozen or so wides).
And then, eight balls before the end of what was to have been a 14-over innings, the rain came, and that was it: the night went from grey to grey and wet, although it was already so dark that we were going to struggle to play out the match. At least the continued downpour gave us no choice but to keep drinking in the bar, for fear of getting soaked if we attempted to leave.
