And so Remnants was once again subject to a brutal and treacherous attack as one of our own players went on a rampage against us. Today it was Coton captain George Speller who first played an innings of pure destruction, hitting more than half the deliveries he faced to the boundary, before coming back an hour later to end the game with a searing yorker that the sent stumps flying in all directions (well, except backwards in time - even he doesn't bowl that fast).
And if you take a wicket with the last ball of the game, you can't have lost, right? Well, in anarchic Cambridge evening games you can: it turns out we'd hit the winning runs off the previous delivery, but for some reason nobody believed scorers Chris McNeill and Sally despite the fact that both books added up perfectly. Consensus was reached a ball later, resulting in the shaking of hands and the shaking of heads in equal measure.
By this stage it was miserably cold, but the game had begun a few hours earlier in blazing sunshine that had most people down to one jumper. Remnants fielded first - both because Coton had won the toss and chosen to bat, and, miraculously, because we were the first of the two teams to have a full eleven present. Coton struggled to score freely, as Chris McNeill (0/14), Julius Rix (0/7), Faruk Kara (0/13), Simon McAdam (1/12), Matt Hughes (0/13) and Daniel Mortlock (1/5) all proved as difficult to hit as they were easy to block. The bowlers' efforts were backed up by some fantastic fielding, with Rob Harvey 'keeping well to the numerous shooters that came off the soft pitch, and Nick Clarke, Chris McNeill, Matt Hughes and Sean Dennis, in particular, all doing great work in the outer. The determination of the latter pair was revealed most strikingly when they both overhauled their youthful captain in pursuit of a cracking drive, although Sean also made one of the least successful catching attempts in club history. When the ball looped straight towards him at cover it seemed to be the simplest chance you could possibly imagine. However the ball's trajectory saw it eclipse the low sun, and Sean was suddenly completely blinded. With an effectively invisible half-pound leather projectile now flying in his direction, he began stumbling backwards whilst waving his arms around in the vain hope of warding off the potentially deadly missile. The sound of a decidedly antipodean "Aww, Christ!" (think Alf from Home And Away) was quickly followed by an inglorious "plop!" as the ball dropped into the soft turf where Sean had been standing a moment earlier.
Still, there was no net loss, as Joe White (2/4, to bring his season's figures to 3 wickets at an average of 2.00) promptly bowled the reprieved batsman next over, after which Remnants first-timer Mark Henare (1/21) made a further breakthrough to leave Coton on just 77/6 after 14.3 (eight-ball) overs. However this last wicket was clearly a mistake, as it brought George and his brand-new bat to the wicket. He promptly wrecked his friend's bowling figures (a tidy 1/3 soon became 1/21) with an innings of . 4 6 6 2 that included one of the biggest straight hits ever seen at Fitz and a suitably destructive attack on the pavilion roof. The saving grace (for us) was that George had put himself too far down the order: if he'd come in even two overs earlier it might have been enough to change the balance of the game; as it was he didn't even have time to lift Coton's total to triple-figures.
Overhauling a target of 96 never seemed likely to present a serious challenge, but the ease of our chase was as reassuring for us as it was, presumably, demoralising for Coton. Everything was summed up in the first over when Sean Dennis, playing his first innings for Remnants (and, indeed, his first innings for anyone this century), calmly blocked his first two deliveries and then played a superficially similar shot, except this time the ball sped over the long-off boundary a fraction of a second later. And despite the fact that Sean played beautifully for 24 (off 32 balls), he was the least of Coton's worries, as fellow opener Nick Clarke pulled and cut with violent abandon from ball one. Nick was one more good shot from a half-century when Andy Owen, looking on, noted that, "Nick's batting brilliantly at the moment!" and then went onto joke, "If he gets out now it'll just be to avoid getting a jug!" And, sure enough, Nick hit the next ball straight to mid-off and was thus dismissed for 48 (off 33 balls).
Even though Sean departed soon after, the 70-run opening partnership had put the match out of Coton's grasp, and Julius Rix (14* off 15 balls) and Matt Hughes (1* off 4 balls) were left to finish the job at their leisure. George brought himself back on in a last-ditch attempt to get some vital wickets, but after Julius played and missed at a few out-swingers he smacked a boundary to take us to the 97 we needed to win (after which he kindly allowed George to bowl him, safe in the knowledge that the game was already over).
