Report by Paul Jordan:
On arrival at the familiar stomping ground for a large number of Remnants players, we were greeted by a sports field bursting with life. Young cricketers in the nets, tennis players in the distance, a team of young women footballers, a small collection of visiting of Norwegian students, and four Remnants cricketers, one of whom thrust the latest version of the team sheet in my hand. And so it began.
By 6 o'clock having lost the toss we were put into bat with only 8 players present. James Crozier was our only recognised opening batsman and the dilemma lay in who would be his partner. This in itself proved a challenge. A mixture of "well only if you're desperate" to "don't bring a bloody bat near me" to "well I haven't batted since last September". Alec stepped into the breech and did a resolute job partnering James. Trinity's opening pair of bowlers were pretty sharp, occasionally wayward and difficult to face at times, owing to the uneven bounce; but James and Alec took us along nicely to 33/1, with James playing some stylish shots for his 8, whilst Alec added a respectable top score of 16. After that things started to unravel and we went from a promising opening of 34/1 to 34/2 to a rather unhappy looking 66/8. Our innings finished on 89/9 with extras being our second highest scorer of 15. The one bright spot was the new recruit of Huw Davies with a not out score of 12 (more of him was to come when we took to the field).
We took to the field with the opening pair of Jeff Beaumont (0/21) and Adam Long. Both bowled a good line and in Adam's case (2/18) at a decent pace. They were rewarded for their efforts with keeping the score very much under control and two wickets for Adam, including a lovely yorker. With not much of a total defend all we could do was to bowl tightly, field well and hope the wickets would come. This we all did with some good stops particularly John Moore and excellent backing up. Sadly, the wickets dried up and the runs accumulated, chiefly by our sometime wicket-keeper/batsman Kshitij Sabnis. Debutant Huw bowled beautifully missing the outside edge with swing and seam and finished up with a worthy (1/20), partnered by Alec (0/16).
So not a complete humiliation but in truth we were a side short of batsmen who could stay and build an innings and take the attack to their opening bowlers. However, we left in good spirits and were privy to a "sun dog" in the sky as the sun set - see "Weatherton" Fox for an update on this.