Report by Cam Petrie:
In an early-season break with tradition, Remnants turned out for a longer format game at 1pm on a Sunday against touring side Superstars, who were playing their third match in three days. The pleasant surprise was that the freezing weather of earlier in the week had moved off, and the sky was clear, the temperature pretty good, and a few perhaps overly paranoid antipodeans even donning sunscreen.
Discussions between the captains saw the match divided into a two x 20 over innings format, and Remnants was sent in to face the "first" new ball. Openers Cam Petrie (30 off 22 balls) and Richard Rex (10 off 33 balls) managed to negotiate the muscular darts hurled down by the Superstars opening bowler, and his slower and slightly less accurate partner, with Cam soon managing to find gaps to the boundary, while Richard had the frustration of mostly finding sprightly fielders. Uncharacteristically Cam played virtually all of his shots along the ground before spooning a full toss at waist height to mid-off, bringing Remnants to 42/1 in the ninth over. Andy Bell (31* off 38 balls) took the opportunity of a Sunday game to turn out for Remnants for the second time in two years, and quickly calmed any nerves with two sweet fours. This little counterattack soon halted, however, when Superstars brought out their grenade hurling secret weapon: a bowler that somehow managed to release the ball out of the back of the hand just above shoulder height, have it arc high and slow through the air, and then land it on a teasing length. There was soon much speculation that Richard was not moving forward enough, but when he did take a big stride (and a "that's it!" was heard from the benches), he only managed a thick edge to gully - having been "out-Richard Rex-ed". Andrew Granville (7 off 8 balls) joined Andy and managed to up the scoring rate before being trapped LBW by the grenadier and Tom Serby (1 off 6 balls) had a brief cameo before Dave Norman (19* off 13 balls) came out to halt the mid-overs slow death that was setting in. Dave and Andy then set about rotating the strike and punishing bad balls to bring us to a solid but unimposing 112/4 off our first 20 overs.
A quick turnaround saw Nathan Wright (0/30 off 3 overs - fresh from his debut five-fer against the UCam Thirds) given the new(-ish) ball, while Faruk Kara (1/31 off 3 overs) hooped in from the other end. Soon it was realized that we actually had twelve on the park following some change-room confusion, and Dave snuck away to prep the tea. Unfortunately, after an early caught-behind to Andy Owen off Faruk, Superstars set about punishing the slightly too frequent short and/or wide balls that we offered up, and our score was quickly overhauled. Superstars' more "classically trained" number 2 essayed a range of nice shots, while their number 3 was both agricultural and effective, and both soon brought up even 50s and were retired. Afkar Ansar (0/26 off 3 overs), Paul Jordan (0/26 off 4 overs) and Andrew Granville (3/21 off 3 overs) all came in for punishment, and we managed to exhaust Andrew by having him chase balls to the boundary. The two redeeming aspects of the final overs were that Paul managed to clean up one of the new bats, and Remnants debutant Chris Clarkson (0/12 off 3 overs) produced our only truly economical figures, which was particularly impressive considering he had not bowled for over 10 years. Superstars went into the tea interval with a comfortable 43-run lead after bringing up 155/2, and the consensus was that we had produced the dreaded combination of "not enough runs and too many short/loose balls".
To ensure that Remnants didn't have to face the new ball twice, Superstars lead off in the second innings, more or less continuing their batting order where it had left off. Andy Owen (0/8 off 3 overs) handed the gloves over to Cam, and quickly asserted control with the "second" new ball, and although Afshar (0/22 off 2 overs) came in for some rough treatment, the switch to Paul Jordan (1/25 off 4 overs) and critically Richard Rex (3/19 off 4 overs) actually saw us wrestle dominance. Paul managed to draw one Superstars opener into a lofted pull shot that fell to the safest of safe hands of Dave Norman (who had replaced Andrew on the field). Richard then set about "re-Richard Rex-ing" the Superstars middle order with his own brand of hand-grenades: first drawing a catch through to Cam at keeper, and then two stumpings (both in one over) - stalling Superstars at 59/4 at the halfway point. Faruk (1/22 off 4 overs), Chris Clarkson (1/17 off 3 overs) and Andy Owen saw us home picking their way through the rest of the middle order before the Superstars' top order started to cycle back in and they managed 118/6 before their overs ran out - leaving Remnants with a feasible, but relatively imposing 161 to chase.
We followed form by sending Andy Bell (6 off 5 balls) and Dave Norman (10 off 9 balls) back out. They both started well, but Andy soon nicked off, new bat Nathan Wright (0 off 2 balls) was cleaned up, and Dave was then given LBW to an extremely enthusiastic appeal (from the bowler at least). A few quizzical brows were raised, as Dave had put in the biggest stride possible, and most of the Superstars were not interested, but the finger was up and we were stalled on 3/21 in the third over. Tom Serby (37 off 26 balls) set about rebuilding things with Afkar (8 off 13 balls) before the Superstars grenadier returned and saw first Afkar and then Faruk (0 off 3 balls) stumped in quick succession in the seventh over. Cam (0 off 3 balls) came out to join Tom, but played on off a new Superstars bowler who hadn't bowled in the first innings and transformed from looping trundler to back of a length speedster within the span of his first over. Richard Rex (19 off 30) and Tom managed to negotiate a challenging period before both falling, and we were soon struggling to bat through our overs. Paul Jordan (11* off 30 balls) and Andy Owen (3 off 18 balls) managed to push us over the 100-mark before Andy was bowled in the final over and Chris Clarkson (0* off 2 balls) continued his auspicious debut by ensuring that we weren't bowled out. If we were simply basing the result on the second innings, this was a very close game, but the sinking feeling that we had at tea only solidified into the reality that we would have had a very different game on our hands if we had set 20 more runs, given away 20 less run or both in the first innings.