Last week saw The Technology Partnership defeat Remnants after a dozen unsuccessful attempts, and today we had to hope for a similar reversal of fortune. We've been trundling down to Newnham for an early-season game against Selwyn College since 1995, but have only managed to win once. Otherwise it's been a sequence of rain-induced cancellations and half a dozen defeats, most of them heavy. When some seven Remnants were present before even the first Selwyn player had arrived this evening, it seemed like a good omen, but their entire eleven suddenly appeared en masse and, by the time they'd won the toss and chosen to bat, we were relying on the services of twelfth man Dave Williams to complete our fielding side.
The Selwyn openers were diabolically lucky to survive a seemingly endless sequence of misses and inside edges, and were then rewarded with some disastrous leg-side long-hops that were pulled to the distant boundaries or, when out of reach, turned into multiple wides. Our fielding effort felt like it was stuck in first gear, with minimal commitment to the cause: an outstretched foot was often the preferred method to stop fast balls, and easy twos were allowed to slower shots when the fielders let the ball come to them in the deep. With the opening partnership approaching triple-figures, Russell Woolf (2/25) induced a big top-edge, but when he and Richard Rex both raced to get under the ball it was easy to imagine the batsmen's outrageous good fortune was set to continue. As the likely collision drew closer, most fielders were screaming that it was "Richard's ball!" (possibly motivated by some intuitive awareness of the fact that Richard has taken more than three times as many catches per match), but Russ held his ground as both the ball and Richard plummeted towards him, and whilst Richard made contact first, Russ stood firm, holding the catch even as Richard bounced harmlessly away.
We exerted a little more control in the dying overs of the innings as Joe White (0/19) and Daniel Mortlock (1/14) kept the scoring below a run a ball, and both Joe and Liam Vasey held good outfield catches. Making the long walk from the field, it was surprising to see that Selwyn had made "only" 138/3 - it had felt like a lot more.
More importantly, it also felt like we could win if we batted well, and we certainly had the requisite strength, with openers John Richer and Nick Clarke fresh from innings of 77 and 113, respectively. And when they took us to 26/0 off 3 (eight-ball) overs we could dream that we were just a dozen overs from a surprise victory.
Unfortunately, Selwyn's first-change bowlers came on and quickly killed off the match with tight spells that dismissed both Nick (10 off 12 balls) and John (17 off 19 balls) and then strangled our middle order of Liam Vasey (10 off 19 balls) and Richard Rex (14 off 21 balls). Liam at least had the consolation of inducing the "play of the day" when the cover fielder leapt into the air to catch his cracking square drive one-handed - incoming batsmen were instructed in the strongest terms "not to hit the ball to him". However the Selwyn 'keeper heplfully suggested one of their other fielders, presumably not a regular cricketer, would make a more suitable target - and when he was brought onto bowl the main result was some rather easy runs for Daniel Mortlock (25 off 21 balls).
As the match wound down Selwyn brought one of their opening bats on to bowl, and it seemed his golden touch had not been dimmed in the innings break, as he promptly got three rather soft wickets. With two balls to go we were nine-down and needed two more runs to at least make it to triple figures. Half the job seemed to be done when John Moore (0* off 1 ball) played a nice cut, but neither he nor Matt Hughes (1 off 1 ball) made any sort of call, and we watched in horror as they both oscillated mid-pitch until the easiest of run outs was completed by the Selwyn 'keeper.
It was a suitably down-beat ending to what, for us at least, was a rather dismal game - hardly how we'd have planned to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the first Remnants game, even if the result back then the result was much the same. Tonight was also the first time we'd been dismissed since last year's Selwyn game, although our innings in that match ended in an even more absurd run out. About half of us stayed to drown our sorrows at the clubhouse bar, but the Selwyn players vanished as suddenly as they'd arrived - one could almost imagine them ditching this fixture after today, although maybe that's underestimating the pleasures of a game where you give your part-timers lots to do and still win by 40 runs.