Report by Daniel Mortlock:
For the first time in Remnants history the toss was recorded for posterity: Churchill College arrived with not just a full team, but a director of photography, complete with video camera. Having captured his captain's successful call, he then engaged in a quick pre-match interview about their batting line-up before turning his attention the rather ill-prepared Remnants captain, who offered up a series of cliches before getting on with the more serious business of setting his field.
Despite some late arrivals, the presence of super-sub Dave Norman meant this was a pretty simple task, and the only real difficulty was the presence of three Johns (Moore, Richer and Young) in the side. It was hard enough setting the field without them all moving in unison, and things got even worse when Chris McNeill induced a lofted drive under which both John Young and John Moore converged. The apparently decisive call "John's ball!" of course did no good and the chance duly went to ground. Still, Chris had plenty of success, taking 2/23 in his last game before moving to Australia; and Julius Rix (3/11), Daniel Mortlock and Faruk Kara (both 2/10) and John Moore (1/19) all got amongst the wickets as well. The basic reason was that Churchill seemed to have inverted their batting order: a succession of fairly hopeful swipes saw the ball either smash into the stumps or edged through to 'keeper Rob Harvey (who pouched two neat catches). After 13 (eight-ball) overs Churchill - and the match - was in real trouble with the scoreboard showing 71/9 (as distinct from the bewildering "57/13" it had displayed a few minutes earlier). But then the last wicket pair smashed 27 runs (four of which came from the cheekiest of reverse sweeps) off the next 13 balls, their charge only being stopped when third-man John Richer held onto a spiraling outside edge to end Churchill's innings with two balls unused.
Our chase proceeded steadily, if a little sleepily, as runs came without any real drama. John Young hit 9 (off 17 balls), which was significant not for his elegant leg-glance to the boundary, but because it was the fourth time in his last six Remnants innings that he'd been dismissed for 9. John Richer (20 off 30 balls) played a curious innings that mixed free-scoring from one end with an inability to put bat on ball from the other, at least until he got the thinnest of edges through to the 'keeper. When another wicket fell the next over there was the hint of mid-innings wobble, but Tom Jordan (29* off 24 balls) and Andy Owen (28* off 27 balls) steadied the ship and then began to accelerate to the point that we ended up winning with 19 balls to spare.
After that there was only time for some brief post-match interviews (in which the main focus of attention appeared to be the Churchill captain's "package") and a quick beer with a fourth John, the Gull of that name having come by on a bike that cost about the same amount as it takes to run Remnants for a whole season.