Report by Daniel Mortlock:
St Barnabas Church have revolutionised mid-week friendly cricket. Whereas for decades everyone has been happy enough to go along with the "run around for a few hours and then have a couple of beers" paradigm, St Barnabas have now replaced this with "run around for a few hours and then eat pizza". They first sprung this on an unsuspecting Remnants eleven last year, which meant that this year we were ready and salivating in the manner of Pavlov's poor pooches.
But before we could tuck into any doughy delights, there was the small matter of a cricket match to play. It was a glorious evening, and Matt Samson tried his best to influence proceedings in the classic laconic Aussie style by repeatedly noting that "awww, it looks like it'd be pretty nice to bat first", which indeed it did. But that just meant it was a good evening to be running late, and the fact that St Barnabas were still missing four players at 6:10pm guaranteed them the chance to test Matt's assertion for themselves.
And the early signs were that it was not so nice batting first, at least against the might of our bowling attack and the idiosyncrasy of their umpire: Joe White (1/9) was too good for one opener; and the other was given LBW when Matt Samson (0/18) got one of his over-spinners to leap off a length. But, you ask with incredulity, how can a bowler get an LBW and end up with none-for? The answer is "easily", if the ball hit's the batsman's thigh above stump height and the appeal is withdrawn. Still, this reprieve notwithstanding, the St Barnabas top order were doing no more than surviving, and were just 38/2 after 10 (six-ball) overs. What was even more fun was that this was the result of uniformly excellent bowling by possibly the most varied attack Remnants has ever put out. Aside from Joe's seam-up and Matt's left-arm googlies, there were some nice drifters from Paul Jordan (1/12, and now on 295 Remnants wickets - just 5 more to go), some classic spitting leg-spin from Saurav Dutta (1/15 on debut for the club), parabolic bombs from John Moore (0/16), "right arm round" wrong-uns from Daniel Mortlock (2/7), and off-spin from Faruk Kara (2/27, although it would have been 3/15 or so if Matt hadn't played show-pony while trying to complete a catch on the short leg-side boundary in front the pavilion). It was joyous being able to chop and change between such a range of options, although it goes without saying that these immaculate bowling figures inevitably owe plenty to the fielders - or, really, fielder, since the lion's share of the work was once again done by James Crozier, who made a dozen brilliant stops while some of us barely got to touch the ball. It was all going so well that, for a while, the only problem seemed to be that we weren't going to get a total to chase; but a late-innings blow-out saw 34 runs come from the last three overs, which meant St Barnabas finished on a respectable 110/7.
Our run-chase never looked in serious danger, but neither did it proceed smoothly, as a score of 9/2 after 3 overs rather suggests. From here Jono Beagle (30* retired off 22 balls), Temoor Khan (13 off 10 balls), Grant Kennedy (24 off 19 balls) and Saurav Dutta (20 off 24 balls) compiled a perfect team innings, with each seamlessly slotting into the role vacated by whoever had preceded them. St Barnabas's best hope seemed to be to keep giving Wilson one-over spells, as every time he was brought (back) on he induced a well-set batsman smashed a drive to mid-off who took a stunning catch - both Temoor and Saurav perished this way, and presumably two more batsmen would have met the same fate if Wilson had been given third and fourth spells. Not that St Barnabas weren't mixing things around, out-doing us 9 bowling changes to 8, one result of which was to confuse their scorer to the degree that she shouted out "Bowler's name?!" only to be informed that it was her husband marking out his run-up. Still, the fact that such machinations were a bit hopeless was rather hard to deny, especially when instructions came from the field to "bring the pizza order forward to 8:45pm!" This seemed to be scarily prophetic when the delivery vehicle arrived just as Joe White (7* off 15 balls) tied the scores up in the middle of the 17th over. We made it quite clear we wanted the match finished next ball; but, instead, there followed a sequence of 10 consecutive dots as Joe and Faruk Kara (1* off 8 balls) repeatedly denied our appetites before Joe finally punched a drive through the ring of fielders saving one.
There followed a most convivial hour as most of the two teams raced to get access to the fast-vanishing food while also making quick work of several jugs of beer. This seemed like an impressive effort until it was contrasted with last night's effort's by Fitz's rugby squad, who'd gone through a couple of kegs while deliberately inducing each other to vomit into a rubbish bin. Allegedly.