Report by Daniel Mortlock:
In the hours before game time there was the now standard frenzy of WhatsApp messages looking for extra players . . . albeit for the opposition, rather than us, for once. Having duly bolstered ARM's numbers - thanks Anand! - we then managed the even greater miracle of all being at the ground on time. (Perhaps Queens' is easier to get to than Fitz?) That gave us plenty of time to catch up on various league performances on the weekend, most of which seemed pretty prosaic until someone announced that Qaiser had taken 5/8 for Madingley; he was suitably modest about this - but did note that his figures were actually 5/5.
It was hence only natural to give Qaiser the new ball (even though this logic was revealed to be false last time we took this approach) and he duly delivered with a searing spell of 3 overs, 1 maiden, 0/6, with most balls zipping past the outside edge and slamming into 'keeper Marcus Baker's gloves. At the other end Matthew Doel (1/24) was expensive initially before dragging his line from leg to off, after which he was every bit as threatening as Qaiser - and he got a deserved wicket when one of the ARM openers was so late on an attempted pull that he could only manage to spoon a simple return catch.
ARM's number 3 and 4 then mounted a steady recovery, both making it to the retirement score of 25, although their primary achievement was to confuse everyone (i.e., including themselves) by having the number 5 come out to act as the runner for the number 4, who then swapped upon the number 3's retirement, before then resuming duties as runner when he was dismissed. That there was just the one run out during this period was a miracle. A total of 57/1 at the half-way mark might have looked okay, but it really felt like a house of cards that was ready to tumble, which indeed it did as Daniel Mortlock (1/14) and Temoor Khan (3/12) precipitated a decisive collapse. That three of these wickets came with support from Marcus (two stumpings) and Phil Hastings (a good catch) suggests we backed our bowlers up in the field; but in fact it was mostly mayhem, with several cases of multiple fielders converging on the putative landing spot of the ball (which in one case was occupied by the ARM runner), only for everyone to hold back allowing it to become the ball's actual landing spot. After Phil's one over mini-spell of 0/9, Stefan Mandelbaum (1/39) finished things off with an over with a bit of everything: boundaries, byes, no balls, wides . . . but, most importantly, a wicket to add to his nascent collection.
A target of 126 for victory mightn't seem that much, but it was hard not to be nervous when it was pointed out that we'd failed to chase 79 against this opposition here a year ago. All such pessimism was briefly set aside, however, when Seb Hammersley dismissed the first ball of the innings way over mid-off for what was almost a six. This turned out to be a somewhat calculated power move: the bowler, Adnan Khan (who'd dropped by and came on in jeans and trainers as a super-sub) plays in the same league as Seb, who wanted a psychological victory to go with an actual one; and he was a decidedly successful as Adnan, having finished with figures of 0/27, immediately headed home chuntering about how the ball was too soft and/or the wrong colour for his particular approach to be successful.
Things calmed down after this as Seb and James Robinson settled in for what looked like it could have been a 10-wicket victory but for retirements. James (27* off 23 balls) and Seb (26* off 24 balls) were called in off consecutive deliveries, after which Phil Hastings (9 off 16 balls) and Andy Bell (9 off 11 balls, and using £900 worth of kit courtesy of his daughter - that's £100 per run) found the going tougher against ARM's slower bowlers. There followed a slightly nervy period in which only 31 runs came from 6 overs - while that matched the required run rate, we were also losing wickets, and just one bad over might have been enough to cause real problems. Fortunately, TK (13 off 9 balls) broke the shackles with some superb sweeps where he came down the pitch to take the ball on the full, the trajectory of both bat and ball perfectly horizontal, after which Marcus Baker (9* off 14 balls) and Qaiser Ahmed (7* off 6 balls) combined for their second successful partnership of the day, Qaiser hitting the winning boundary off the first ball of the 20th over.