The 2008 Remnants season was defined by inconsistency. Nine different players captained the team and an incredible total of 52 people made appearances in the 25 matches we actually played. That last qualification is rather important because a grand total of 10 fixtures were cancelled -- that's almost as many as in 2007, although at least this year it was only due to the weather, rather than opposition stuff-ups. When we did actually get to play our performances were mixed at best, as we won 9, tied 1 and lost 13 of our 23 external games, only the fourth time in the club's history that we've ended a season ``in the red''.
Last season's successes were based around some awesome team bowling performances, and the most noticeable change this year was that we couldn't constrain the oppositions' best batsmen, and, on some occasions, even struggled against their part-timers who were only getting a bat 'cos it was a friendly. And when opposition batsmen really decided to let rip the results were depressingly spectacular, as in our maulings at the hands of Coton or The Cavendish. Ironically, our top individual bowling performances were amongst the best in the club's history, with Les Collings's career-best 5/27 against The Computer Lab surprisingly being relegated to second place when Tom Serby took 6/15 against The Pretty Boys. Still, Les had the last laugh, topping the bowling averages with 13 wickets at 9.00 to pip Tom (11 wickets at 10.55), Andy Owen (8 wickets at 12.75) and Daniel Mortlock (19 wickets at 12.89) to the coveted non-prize. Those figures might make it seem like we were all over the opposition's batsman, but the problem was that nobody else got more than 6 wickets at less than 20, and only Alex Brown conceded under 5 runs an over.
Our batting was similarly erratic, with some stunning individual efforts (e.g., John Gull's 105* off 103 balls in the all-day game against The Woozlers; Nick Clarke's 100 off 66 balls against The Pretty Boys; Andrew Lea's 83* off 59 in the tie with Granta) going some way to masking the fact that big totals were the rarity, not the rule. Only John Gull (311 runs at 155.50), Andrew Lea (159 runs at 53.00), Daniel Mortlock (233 runs at 46.60) and Nick Clarke (319 runs at 31.90) averaged over 30 (and of these only Daniel and Nick got out enough times to get a full average). Otherwise it seemed to be a case of making solid twenties before getting out just when the hard work had been done . . . but then again getting out to silly shots is very much part of the Remnants experience, and it would probably be getting ideas above our station to aspire to doing anything else.