Report by Daniel Mortlock:
Rather unusually, this evening's fixture, against The Dobblers Inn, has its genesis back in early 2020 when, following a tip-off from Sally Hales, an enquiry was submitted via the pub's website. They apparently sat on this for over two years before replying out of the blue this June, which seemed a bit strange . . . and it wasn't until this evening that we found out the explanation: our "official" enquiry had had no effect whatsoever; but club stalwart Rob Harvey had dropped in to the Dobblers as they can be relied upon to show Test cricket and had gotten into a conversation with the landlady about the possibility of a mid-week game.
That mid-week game finally took place today, ending both our and their season - although it was such a lovely sunny evening that it's tempting to think we could keep playing on for weeks to come. This of course is a fallacy we fall for every August, and by next week the sun will surely be setting at about 3pm over a sodden landscape of puddles and crushed dreams. The bright conditions notwithsanding, this evening's captains were experienced enough not to be over-ambitious and so agreed on a reduced format of 4 8-ball overs a side. Rather remarkably both sides were sufficiently punctual to have an actual toss (with a 10p coin supplied by Max, the only player on either side to have any cash on his person): The Dobblers' skipper called incorrectly, so we decided to have a bat.
This decision was immediately vindicated as openers Tom Serby and Cam Petrie started hitting boundaries at will. At the half-way mark we were sitting pretty on 32/0, well on track for a 50+ score, but we had to be content with a final total of 41/0, to which Tom had contributed 23* off 18 balls and Cam 15* off 13 balls.
Our defense got off to the perfect start as Daniel Mortlock (1/6) led off with a maiden and then Max Ayliffe (2/15) took a wicket before he'd conceded a run. Rather nicely, Max's first wicket came when Daniel held onto a hard-hit drive at mid-on, after which Max returned the favour when a dolly came his way at mid-wicket - although the catch was rendered non-trivial because the batter was already screaming at himself by the time the ball got to him. On the final delivery of the fourth over the surviving Dobblers opener bizarrely shouldered arms to a straight yorker and was (uncontroversially) given out LBW; we'd thus reduced The Dobblers to 22/3 and won handsomely by 19 runs.
It was great to end our season with a win - quite rare this summer - and even though it would have been nice to play some more cricket . . . which unfortunately was what happened, as the above describes only the first third of both innings.
Our innings bucked the short-form trend by going down through the gears: with both Tom (30* off 25) and Cam (32* off 29 balls) retiring, we didn't double our 3-over total until half-way through the 9th over and ended up scoring at less than a run a ball. Through a combination of good bowling and un-enterprising running, none of batters 3-8 made it into double figures or scored at more than a run a ball.
After the first 4 overs of our defense described above The Dobblers needed 74 runs from 64 balls - an improvement from where we started, but not a fundamental scoring challenge in such a short format . . . and, as it turned out, even less of a challenge in practice: The Dobblers' chase used up only 5 of the remaining 8 overs, each of which went for more than 10 runs. There were a few heroic fielding efforts - Andrew Lea made some good chases, and Tom Serby saved an otherwise certain four at the expense of his knee - but that was about it.
Our season thus came to a decidedly tame end; and, with most of our players heading off right after the game, the final image at Fitz for 2022 was of the opposition in a circle with some beers celebrating their come-from-behind win . . .