Report by Daniel Mortlock:
Returning to Fitz after an enforced two-week absence, we arrived to find that the ground had become an even greater batting paradise than it had been before Dave Norman's well-earned holiday. The pitch looked flat and hard; the outfield loooked . . . well, flat and hard, really; and it was the sort of dry, hot day on which even Test attacks find themselves completely impotent in the face of decent batting. There were more Remnants than opposition players present at the appointed start time of 5:45pm and so we agreed to field - although once again the rest of the County Council's players arrived suspiciously as soon it had been confirmed that they'd be batting first.
Still, the early signs were good for us, Felix Serby (2/17) conceding just 4 runs from the first (eight-ball) over of the game while nabbing a wicket, his brother Samuel running around from first slip to take a top-edged pull just inches above the ground. Unfortunately, the not quite so early signs were awful, as runs came easily and our fielding wilted (although that's not quite right, since it implies it was initially good; it would be more accurate to say that it arrived pre-wilted like those ridiculous bagged salads that most supermarkets sell these days). Between 20 and 30 runs went through - or under, or over - fielders; throws back to the bowler seemed to result in the ball dribbling off to some vacant patch of the field; and a host of catching, stumping and run out chances went begging. There was at least some backing up of throws, although even this went wrong when Geoff Hales, who was only playing due to a no-show, stopped a lightning fast return with his shin. Add in a decent number of loose balls from pretty much all the bowlers, and it's no surprise that we were facing a target of 200+ . . .
. . . except that we weren't. Greatest credit here goes to our slower bowlers, Samuel Serby (2/29) and Ferdi Rex (1/28) proving the most difficult to hit - although not so difficult that Chris Badger, who would have been playing for us tonight if we didn't have such an insane glut of availability, was prevented from retiring upon reaching 40 with a huge six. We did also take four catches during all this, with the linguistically pleasing quartet of S. Serby, F. Serby, F. Rex and E. Fox all holding on to the ball. Paul Jordan (0/28) "got a bit of tap" (his words), after which Adeel Khursheed (0/20) and Daniel Mortlock (1/26) were at least able to keep the scoring rate from increasing in the last few overs. And even though all of our bowlers went for more than a run a ball, the County Council's final total was "only" 155/6.
Of course the "only" here is completely contextual, the context being that such targets haven't really been enough at Fitz this year - something that our opposition knew only too well, as at the changeover they were heard talking in dejected tones about how easily we'd chased down their uncannily similar total of 152 a month ago. And, sure enough, after a quiet start - we were "only" 14/0 after 2 overs - the runs started to come with near complete freedom. Ferdi Rex raced to 40* (off 24 balls), at which point he was forced to retire with the team total just 59/0. Tim Cannings (20 off 20 balls) and Tom Serby (37 off 28 balls) then took up where Ferdi had left off, and by the time they took us past 100 in the 9th over it was pretty clear that we were going complete yet another big chase with ease.
Particularly noteworthy was that Tom was zooming back and forth between the wickets, nabbing quick singles and grabbing cheeky third runs. There was brief talk that he'd had been replaced by a fast-moving alien shape-shifter; but the eventual explanation was, sadly, more prosaic: after a lengthy break from cricket Tom was finally playing without significant injuries and so was able to move freely for the first time in his fairly lengthy (116 matches over 9 seasons) Remnants career. A particular highlight here was when Tom was joined by his son Samuel (18* off 14 balls) and easily kept pace with his much younger progeny. The same was true when Martin Law (15* off 12 balls) replaced Tom and played a series of delightful late cuts that allowed Samuel to scamper the third run to the danger end. It was this sort of superb cricket that meant we were able to hit the winning runs with almost 10% of the innings remaining - no bad thing, since the Sun had already set.
That left plenty of time for beer as the western sky turned from pink to purple to black (rather like the bruise on Geoff's shin, one suspects).