Report by Daniel Mortlock:
On yet another baking hot evening at the parched Fitzwilliam ground it was pretty clearly a "bat first" scenario: the lightning fast outfield would probably slow up a little as the evening went on; and the ball would likely also soften up too (even if the smart money was that the hard new match ball would be lost over the netting on the ultra-short leg-side boundary long before the game was concluded). It was thus with predictable unhappiness that the Remnants side reacted to the sight of the captain returning from the toss miming bowling - although as we were on time and a few Sharks were late this would have been the result even if their skipper hadn't called correctly.
Still, we started brilliantly as Qaiser Ahmed (0/14) allowed just a single off his first over, immediately finding the perfect length to have the batsmen probing uncertainly outside off stump. That Qaiser went wicketles was a denial not only of justice, but of the laws of physics, as one of the Sharks openers seemed to play exclusively with the leading edge but somehow was neither bowled or caught - until the inevitable finally happened when he chipped an easy return catch to change bowler CJ Barrie (1/42).
That might sound promising but, nice as the "1" was, the "42" was unfortunately more representative of the next hour: other than Qaiser, all our bowlers went for more than 9 per (eight-ball) over; and all bar one of them went wicketless too. Nobody really bowled that badly - many of the runs came off outside edges and there were lots of boundaries from innocuous shots that, again in seeming denial of the laws of physics, appeared to accelerate across the ground. Rather, the problem was that we fielded like a bunch of old men - for which we at least had the excuse that most of us are. In Paul, Dave, Nick, Tom, Andy and Daniel we had a silver-haired brigade with an average age pushing sixty but a top speed considerably lower.
Perhaps the answer is to start dyeing our hair? Certainly this seemed to do the trick for the youngest member of our side: a peroxided Felix Serby, who last played for Remnants as a 14-year-old back in 2017, was now all grown up, combining superb hand-eye coordination with ridiculous ground speed and a general Tigger-like energy. Felix was nominally in the side as a batter today, claiming his bowling days were behind him; but he rewarded his captain's desperate pleas for a few overs with a superb spell of 3/27 (hence taking 50% of the wickets to fall in the whole match). It wasn't enough to fully curb the rampant Sharks batsmen - they were surely happy with their final total of 162/4 - but it did at least mean we weren't completely humiliated.
Felix then got to continue his good work, opening the batting with dad Tom. Both Serbyi made good use of some loose bowling and the fast outfield (helped by some bad fielding lapses on the boundary), and Felix even forced Tom to take some quick singles. They looked so in control that a single-family ten-wicket victory would have been on the cards but for the fact that we were playing with retirements at 40. To general surprise - and Felix's chagrin - Tom made it there first, being induced by some screaming from the pavilion to go for an unprecdented third run, which took him to 41* (off 28 balls). Felix then accelerated nicely himself, so much so that the scorers didn't realise he'd made it to 40 until the bowler was delivering the next ball. To the sounds of "stop, stop stop!" Felix swatted one more boundary, but it was correctly decided that this should be annulled, and so he had to be content with 40* (off 23 balls - critically, at least for family bragging rights, 5 fewer than Dad).
If all this sounds like one-way traffic - well, it was: upon Felix's retirement we were 86/0 after 8.1 overs. That said, it's less clear that we were winning (and if we were, it wasn't by much), as we still needed 77 runs from 55 balls, and now with two new batsmen having to get used to what had become rather gloomy conditions. Sure enough, neither Andy Bell nor Joe White could quite match the scoring rate of the Serbices, being largely restricted to singles, in part because the Sharks fielding picked up during this period. The critical moment seemed to be the 13th over, for which the Sharks brought back their miserly opening bowler; and, sure enough, he got a wicket with his first ball, having Andy caught at mid-on for 24 off 22 balls. Even more significant, new batsman Marcus Baker repeatedly picked out the mid-wicket fielder, and only two singles came from the over. (Not that this was good enough for one of the Sharks fielders, who saw the Remnants total incremented by 2 on the scoreboard and immediately began remonstrating with our scorer, claiming that one of the runs shouldn't have counted as it was just the batsmen crossing while the catch was taken. The irony was is that it was exactly this fact which, when taken together with which end the new batsman was at, proved that the over had indeed yielded an even number of runs.) More worryingly, the next over also began with a wicket - Marcus out for 1 off 6 balls, bowled attempting a reverse sweep - after which we found ourselves needing 21 runs from just 15 balls with new batsman CJ Barrie on strike. CJ immediately exploited the short leg-side boundary, hitting a six and a four, and then grabbing a single off the final ball to keep us in the hunt with 16 needed off the final over:
An exhausted Joe (21* off 24 balls) and a redeemed CJ (28* off 12 balls - presumably grand enough to make up for his vertical hold issues while bowling) were clapped off the field to the sound of much whooping and hollering in the pavilion . . . along with some wailing and gnashing of teeth out on the field - and the sharp sound of a Sharks cap being hurled onto the changing room floor. It really is remarkable how even low-level amateur sport can produce such intense drama and excitement for something that we all try and convince ourselves doesn't really matter that much . . .