Report by Daniel Mortlock:
It is often said that the first casualty of war is truth. In Cambridge mid-week friendly cricket this takes the form of captains telling the opposition that they "have a weak side out today", a tactic which has proved particularly effective against Remnants when one of our regulars is leading a side against us. Cam, skippering TCHT today, started his disinformation campaign early via WhatsApp, although there was also talk of "bolstering" and the suspicous handing out of caps to new players just before the game. When we informed Cam that we were not going to fall for this a second time this season, having previously been hoodwinked in this fashion by TK's GEANT a few weeks ago, TK suddenly got all indignant, claiming "I said our side was weak, but not that it was that weak." At any rate, having lost eight of our last nine external fixtures, any such discussions were trumped by the fact that we needed a morale-boosting win this evening, so from our point of view this really was a war to be won.
Having called correctly at the toss, there was to be no mucking around with funky batting orders - although we were rather spoiled for choice on this front. Which was just as well, as THCT's mystery spinner Iqtedar Alam had Stephen Doel (0 off 1 balls) caught behind from the first ball of the innings and then Kanwar Singh (0 off 4 balls) sharply pouched by Cam at short mid-wicket. After the first (eight-ball) over we were 1/2 and any plans we might have had for an easy win were out the window - or at least needed to be re-drawn.
Still, it wasn't panic stations - we had plenty of batting to come - and Seb Hammersley (36 off 24 balls), Chandan Brar (21 off 19 balls) and Temoor Khan (43* off 29 balls) were all able to score pretty freely, taking us to 74/3 at the half-way mark.
That should have been the platform for an acceleration to 150-odd, but when Chandan was dismissed we had (yet another) mid-innings lull, as Simon Godsill (4 off 15 balls), Qaiser Ahmed (0 off 1 ball, caught on the boundary) and Neil Grover (0 off 11 balls) kept hitting nice shots but straight to fielders: "Waiting . . . no run!" became an increasingly unwelcome mantra. By the time Neil was dismissed we were in serious trouble on 84/7 with just 25 balls left in our innings.
But a new paragraph means yet another shift in the balance of this topsy-turvy innings, as Daniel Mortlock (14* off 14 balls) joined TK. Thanks in part to Cam's penchant for both kinds of no balls (multiple bounces and high full tosses), 43 runs came from the next 17 deliveries, a sequence broken only by TK's enforced retirement. (Treated as a completed partnership - which it technically isn't as no wicket fell - it would be third on the table of fastest Remnants partnerships.)
We then got one more over of wizardry from Iqtedar, who conceded just 2 runs and book-ended the innings by finishing it with a wicket, Joe White (0 off 2 balls) bowled off the final delivery of the innings.
Our final total of 128/8 was . . . well, not as bad as it might have been. But what was as bad as it might have been - or was at least as bad as it ever has been - was our duck count: five. This equalled the club record - and, ominously, we'd lost the game each of the previous six times we managed this.
Still, we had eleven fit players raring to go - or not: Simon suffered a re-occurence of his recent back injury; after which Daniel briefly dislocated his right index finger during the fielding warm-ups; and then, in the second over of the innings, Qaiser slipped over - the old pitches on the square were a bit like concrete, with little grip - and injured his wrist while trying to break his fall. What initially looked painful was soon revealed to be serious: Qaiser soon left the field, to be ably replaced by Andy Owen, and headed off to A&E where, unfortunately, X-rays revealed a small fracture. While Qaiser should make a full recovery, it's almost certainly the end of his 2023 cricket season.
The more immediate implication for us was that we were down a critical bowler, and so had to hope that the five we had left could stay the course. Faced with two of HTCT's three "proper" batters, our opening bowlers struggled, with both Joe White (0/33) and Tim "Simmons" (0/21) getting some tap in particular from Cam, who was in the sort of supreme form that seems to be guaranteed when Remnants regulars plays against us. One of Cam's three sixes landed on top of the clubhouse (as distinct from the pavilion) and then bounced into Dave's back garden - and that wasn't even his best shot. The one moment of joy for us in the early part of the innings was a freak dismissal when Cam played a well-timed leg glance that went straight to Daniel at square-leg; Cam's opening partner called for the run and raced down the pitch while Cam was un-moved; Daniel then lobbed the ball to the non-striker's wicket, secure in the knowledge that there would be someone to take the throw . . . but there wasn't, and so everybody - including the non-striker - had nothing better to do than watch to see if throw was on target. It was.
Suitably emboldened, Daniel brought himself on to bowl, with immediate effect, taking two quick wickets . . . which was a mistake, as it brought in TTCH's third serious batter, their wicket-keeper Hume Fisher, who proceeded to play the best innings of the day. With Cam still going strong and Hume punishing anything short, the scoring rate went through the roof, with 41 runs comning overs 9, 10 and 11. At this point TCTH had reached 93/3, and now needed 36 off 32 balls, surely do-able even though Cam had retired (for 44* off 33 balls). The sense was that it all came down to Hume: if we could get him out then the game would be ours; otherwise it would be yet another frustrating loss. And for a while it was a case of frustration, as TK (0/26) beat Hume with a couple of superb leg-spinners off consecutive deliveries, only for Kanwar, rusty after playing minimal cricket, to miss the resultant stumping chances. We then turned to Seb Hammersley (2/17), whose lesser-seen offies were initially too short . . . but, once he got his length right, were finally enough to get us the wicket we needed, Hume out bowled for 35 off 22 balls.
From there the game turned on its head, as rather than seeking wickets we wanted to avoid them, for fear of giving a second innings to Cam (now umpiring in his pads). Daniel was quite clear about this strategy, but spectacularly failed to enact it, as he bowled two of CHTT's weaker batters in his second spell. He thus finished with seductively appealing figures of 4/9, but risked the win in the process. Fortunately, the madness stopped there, and Tim and Seb bowled tight - and wicket-less - overs to see us home by what was a deceptively comfortable margin of 18 runs.
Winning a single-innings game despite five players getting ducks clearly isn't an everyday occurrence - and a post-match look at the numbers revealed the lop-sidedness was actually even more extreme than this: just four of our eleven (Seb, Chandan, TK and Daniel) between them scored 114 of the 118 runs we made off the bat and took all our 7 wickets with no fielding assists.