Report by Daniel Mortlock:
Following a week in which we first made a hopelessly doomed attempt to play a 15x8's game that was, unsurprisingly, abandoned and then perhaps over-reacted with a retreat to an abbreviated 10x8's format, we settled on what was hopefully a sensible middle ground today: 12 eight-ball overs a side, aided by actually getting going before 6pm.
Paradoxically, both sides began well. The Girton top order, led by one-time Remnant Jon Steele repeatedly found the boundary, the ball scooting across the dry surface. But we managed some superb efforts in the field: in the first over John Moore combined with 'keeper Ev Fox to complete a relaxed run out after the Girton opener's ludicrous call for a non-existant single; then Hari Kukreja (1/0) overcame the handicap of being listed as "Granger" in the scorebook to take a sharp return catch to complete a wicket-maiden; and Hari later sacrificed his trousers to complete a fantastic diving save on the boundary; and Tom Serby showed remarkable foot skills in stopping several hard-hit balls while avoiding similar dives himself. Despite tidy work by Phil Hastings (1/8), Girton had reached 72/4 after 8 overs and, with 4 overs still to come, were eyeing up a competitive 100+ total.
Instead the scoring came to almost a complete stop and the final 4 overs of the innings were 1 . . . . . . . | . 1 . . . . . . | . 4 1 . . . . . | B . . . . . . W | as John Moore (0/20) and Daniel Mortlock (1/10) suddenly and inexplicably became apparently impossible to score off - even the one boundary in this sequence was a gentle push that would ordinarily have been two at most. A careful examination of the above sequence reveals that most of these deliveries were faced by a single batter, one George Shanks, who seemed to have a solid technique and middled just about everything, only always to a fielder, until he missed the final ball of the innings to be out for a 25-ball duck.
With a target of just 80 - or was it 76? or 84? - we felt pretty confident of both completing the victory and finishing the game before it was too dark. Our top order of James Robinson (31* retired off 24 balls), Andy Bell (9 off 11 balls) and Tom Serby (a self-characterised "out of sorts" innings off 7 off 12 balls) proceeded smoothly enough, after which Marcus Baker (16* off 6 balls) and Hari (13* off 6 balls) accelerated in almost exactly the same way Girton didn't.
