The indefatigable Dave Williams found a brief pause between club accounting duties to pen the following:
A minor masterpiece of diplomacy and negotiation from captain Paul Jordan helped both sides play by their preferred rules: the Technology Partnership players retire at 30; Remnants' batters keep on going . . . Also 2 for wides and no balls but no extra ball except in the last over - not our usual, but quite sensible for shorter late-summer evenings. Sally's "Pleasant sunshine, warm -> overcast, light breeze" presaged a good evening's cricket, with the added piquancy of knowing that the season is drawing to a close.
Remnants took the field, opening with Naveen Chouksey from the Huntingdon Road end. Tight bowling and a cautious start from the TP opener (knowing they don't get much of a go, so they have to make the most of it?) led to a maiden. Ferdi Rex at the other end seemed down on pace and less metronomic than usual. The TP one and two started finding their attacking shots, skipping down the wicket to get Ferdi a bit of a tonking through long-on and long-off: two (eight-ball) overs, 0/30. Naveen finished his spell for an excellent 3-1-9-1. First change at the Windsor Road end was surprise package Rob Harvey, freed from wicketkeeping duties by the ever-electric Ev Fox. Rob varied his pace from slow to extra slow, bamboozling batsmen into playing two or three shots before the ball implausibly if finally arrived. Rob (3-0-27-2) and Kiran Sakhamuri (3-0-15-1) at the other end skittled through the TP middle order cheaply, including a compulsory retirement, helped by lively fielding all round, specially from Ferdi and Ewan Campbell in the deep. Kiran's bowling in particular kept the usually dangerous Julius Rix (statistically the Remnant most likely to play against us?) comparatively quiet by sticking to a good offside line and full length, cutting off Julius's preferred diet of pulls of short straight stuff. Olly Rex (2-0-21-0) looked a few yards down on pace from last year; he finished off proceedings with Paul Jordan, whose bowling has responded well this season to the burden of captaincy: 2-0-11-0. A good start from TP had faded away, leaving Remnants with what looked like a very chaseable target.
Ev Fox and your correspondent opened and did rather well (supply your own sound effect of Muppets-style self-clapping here), seeing off the good balls and whacking the bad ones that seemed to come at the end of the over. We didn't really feel much pressure out there, which may paradoxically be the result of good bowling - random pie-chucking is much easier to get out to because of the risks of embarrassment. We were managing a little under 9 an over - well above the asking rate - when I departed for 42 (off 43 balls, including a handsome "maximum" over long-leg) at the end of the ninth over. Ev followed shortly for 23 (off 27 balls), featuring some classy bottom-hand straight-bat whips through midwicket. Next, Paul judiciously builds the future of the club and the game by turning to youth to see us home, viz. two-sixths of the collective Rex brood, Ferdi and Olly. A cautious start from Ferdi took us closer to the full allocation of overs than we might have imagined, but the lads had it all under control: a two and a four from Olly off the first two of the last saw us home with 6 balls to spare. Happily for fraternal rivalry both finished on 18*, Ferdi off 22 balls, Olly off 16 balls.
As it happens, John Young and Ewan Campbell didn't get a chance with ball or bat; their patience and courtesy is also a very important part of a good team feeling, which I thought we had today.
