Report by Olly Rex:
The Woozlers are usually a tricky opposition, largely on account of two big-hitting batsmen who have become serial Remnants-bashers over the last decade or so. This season, however, the Remnants top order has developed rather a nice habit of scoring big runs of its own, and so if ever we were equipped to counter these perennial nemeses perhaps it was today.
Sadly, though, the Remnants XI that headed out to bat first had only one of this season's nine top-scorers (opener Julius Rix), and so we knew a tough task was ahead if we were to set a competitive score. We needed to get off to a flier, but instead the other opener, Richard Rex, was dismissed by a handy outswinger in the first over for a duck, and we never really recovered. Julius (19 off 14 balls) hit a few trademark lusty blows, but the rest of the top order struggled to score off the opposition's battery of slow bowlers. Olly Rex (31 off 28 balls) and Andrew Granville (15 off 14 balls) were the only other batsmen to reach double figures, or to score at a decent rate, and the upshot was that we crawled our way to a rather embarrassing 94/8 off our full complement of 20 (six-ball) overs.
We headed out to field with impressive enthusiasm, and there was even a hope that faced with such a score the opposition might reverse the batting order allowing us to wheedle our way back into things. Alec Armstrong (0/7 from 3 overs) kept things really tight up front, but it quickly transpired that the opposition had quite a bit more depth in batting than we had. We finally got a wicket in the 8th over when Faruk (1/27 from 3 overs) dismissed one of the openers LBW, and then Paul Jordan (2/16 from 3 overs) delivered a lovely spell of seam bowling to poach a couple more, as well as coming within an inch of a third when a catchable chance went down at slip. Unfortunately, it was far too little, far too late. The Woozlers coasted home off the last delivery of the 14th over, having thoroughly outclassed Remnants with the bat, with the ball, and in the field.
And the end the aforementioned Remnants-bashers never even had to get padded up.
