Report by Paul Jordan:
Another perfect evening on this mos significant of days, where all over the world [Well, over half of it. - ed.] the Summer Solstice is celebrated. Indeed, were we in Sweden, we could have enjoyed a public holiday. The background to the final team selection took a number of twists and turns before our final eleven was selected. Problems over availabilities and unforeseen drop outs saw the team shrink to eight, but thanks to some sterling work from Cam and Simon, our numbers finished up with the requisite eleven.
The other issue that was finally resolved was a lack of bowlers. Like a scene from the 1960 epic Spartacus: the immortal line of Antoninus (Tony Curtis) "I am Spartacus" morphed into a reassuring "I can bowl . . ." ". . . if you need me to." The ever modest Marcus Baker chipped in with "I could bowl some of my devastating leggies if needed!" Phil Hastings stepped up with an offer, swiftly followed by Neil's offer of off-spin. But our ace up the sleeve was to include one Alex Cowdrey who follows in the footsteps of cricketing royalty - grandfather Colin, uncle Chris and father Graham.
Skippers Paul and Temoor Khan (leading GEANT) arrived at a gentleman's agreement for Remnants to bat first as TK felt his side was thin on batting; echoes of a similar conversation I had with the Hawks' skipper surfaced once more, but we started at a shade after 6pm with a 20x6-ball overs format.
Remnants' openers Simon Godsill and John Richer got off to a brisk start and faced two very promising youngsters, one of whom is the daughter of our very own Qaiser Ahmed. John (2) fell to the young leggie who bowled a beautiful spell, beating the bat on a number of occasions. Simon was his usual combative self and reached his 35 off 21 balls. Our batting continued in much the same vein with CJ Barrie reaching his 35 off 42 balls and Marcus hitting the retirement target of 35 off an impressive 21 balls. After 16 (six-ball) overs we stood poised at 129/2 and the possibility of a 150+ total was on the cards. TK rotated his bowlers well and it would be fair to say that we were never running away with it. Our remaining batsmen kept the score ticking over with Andy Bell (9 off 13 balls), Phil Hastings (8 off 7 balls) and the unfortunate Neil perished without scoring whilst Alex was bowled for 3 off the same number of balls. Our Total of 145/4 eclipsing last week's score by one run.
GEANT'S reply was led by Centaur batsman Sajid who was more than capable of mounting a serious challenge if required. However events conspired against him with a combination of Stefan's variation and an unfortunate mix-up between Sajid and the non-striking batsman, resulting in Sajid being runout with swift work from Neil. Remnants debutante Alex at the other end was bowling at a decent pace and finished up with remarkable figures of 3 overs, 2 maidens 2/2. By this stage GEANT stood at a rather perilous 18/3 off 5 overs. A recovery was needed and realised by the young leggie Chris C., who batted with sensible application. His repertoire included : some delightful cuts, drives and pulls managing to survive Phil Hatings's accurate medium pace. With Faruk Kara plying his trade at one end it was time to bring on Marcus Baker. His spell did indeed provide some bewildering leggies and one such delivery saw the younger of the leggies, Chris, fall to one that popped up and was caught by Andy Bell at mid-wicket. Skipper Paul replaced Faruk at one end and steadied the ship with a tidy spell of 0/16 off his 4 overs. The GEANT batsmen then staged a comeback moving on from 56/4 off 11 overs to 106/5 at close of play - a most respectable reply, but not enough.
Tonight's game was a reminder of how some fixtures could be played with a sense of fun and commitment much to the pleasure of the onlookers. For the first time this season (certainly on a Tuesday game) we were able to enjoy a post-match drink and savour the remains of the day.