Report by Russell Woolf:
To quote a song from Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore: "When there are Remnants scorer's dutys to be done - to be done - a scorer's job is not an happy one - happy one." Or, continuing on a musical note, Ralph Vaughn Williams variations of the rules by Thomas (Tallis) Serby and the ARM skipper it was going to be a challenging night: 1) 15x8 ball overs; 2) wides and no balls are 2 runs until final over; 3) Retirements after 25 runs; 4) 12 players on each side. And so I started my work aided by Dave Green's modified scoresheet which allows me to show runs per over which was to prove invaluable later - thanks Dave!
And so to the game ARM win the toss and elected to bat. Asking the batsman's name the reply was Dan and Matt. Do Dan and Matt have a surname? Don't know . . . great it's going to be one of those nights. Anyway, our opening bowlers do have names: Alec Armstrong (2/21) and Naveen Chouksey (0/22). In the first 4 overs Dan (Handley) and Matt (Rushton) take the score to 31/0 before Alec who suffered last night against the Woozlers (0/35 in 2 8-ball overs) sends both of them back to the pavillion in the space of 3 balls thanks to two sharp stumpings by 'keeper Marcus Baker. A double change of bowler follows with Andrew Celsus (0/22) and Saad Shoukat (1/12) taking up the gauntlet bowling 2 overs each. At the end of 10 (eight-ball) overs ARM are 86/3 with Sandip getting close to the retirement target of 25. A third double bowling change by skipper Tom Serby brings Gabriel Fox (2/27) and Maha Ramanathan (2/15) into play, and both have immediate success combining to dispose of Sandip for 22, caught by Maha of Gabriel's bowling. Maha has to wait until his 2nd over to join the party, bowling Tom Cadmore for 14 and then 2 balls later Marcus Baker claims his third stumping of the game. Gabriel gets the final wicket to fall in the innings in the final over as ARM achieve a total of 128/7 in 15 overs, including 42 extras of which 27 were wides.
Remnants in reply lose Dave Williams (4 off 7 balls) quickly in the first ball of the second over but Kaustav Dutta (13 off 17 balls) and Aditya Jain combine to take the score to 39 before Kaustav is caught off the last ball of Ravi's first over. Tom Serby joins Aditya in the middle and the pair provide the comedy element of the match: in one of Rob Pugh's overs Aditya has a let off as he skies a ball which lands between three converging fielders; the very next ball he is dropped by the bowler; and later it is Tom's great escape moment as he is dropped by the wicket keeper. Somewhere in the middle of all this mayhem they both find themselves at the non-striker's end and an attempted run out goes for "buzzers" and results in 2 runs where there are absolutely none. At 10 overs we are 69/2 wanting 60 runs to win at 12 an over. We have had the comedy time now comes the crazy time: ARM's 6th bowler Ankit commences his 2-over spell and by the time it's finished he has crazy figures of 4/5 and has taken out the entire Remnants middle order of Aditya Jain (15 off 25 balls), Tom Serby (17 off 25 balls), ARM (not so) super-sub Ayaz Shahid (2 off 4 balls) and Andrew Celsus (0 off 4 balls). However, Marcus Baker (11 off 10 balls), Naveen Chouksey (9* off 6 balls) and Maha Ramanthan (7 off 4 balls) do attempt to get the run chase back on track. During this half hour of madness the scorebooks somehow differ by 6 runs but it doesn't matter because Remnants needed 15 off the last ball, which Gabriel Fox faced he scores 3* and is rightly proud of a strike rate of 300.00 . . . but the team falls short by 12 runs, which is approximately the difference between the extras (42 vs. 31).
So it's back to normal with two games on Tuesday and Wednesday next week and, with the season entering the final month, can all players ensure that you let Dan know your availability to make his job a little easier.