Report by Daniel Mortlock:
Remnants has a curiously long list of opponents with TLA names (ARM, CAT, CCL, NCI), to which we can now add PwC, aka The Consulting Firm Formerly Known As PriceWaterhouse Coopers (or, by analogy with Prince's symbol, perhaps just $). Prior to the game there were the usual messages from their organiser about being a mixed-standard team, with the flattering connotations that we might be too strong for them; but we've learned to take these with a grain of salt over the years. Less ambiguous was that they were short of players, with only seven confirmed at the start of the day. That did come up to nine, which we increased to eleven as both Chandan Brar and Dian Weerakonda were able to step in at the last minute.
Rather annoyingly, Chandan proceeded to play his best innings of the year (at least in evening cricket): opening the batting for PwC he raced to 33* retired off 24 balls. This was partly due to access to the short leg-side boundary - Phil Hastings (0/29) would have had him caught pulling but the fielder couldn't move back any further and he went to retirement with a top edge in the same direction that went for six - but there was no escaping the fact that he'd scored a points victory over our bowlers. Despite Paul Jordan (1/16) getting a wicket in his first over, the unwelcome batting dominance continued for most of our innings; with PwC on 81/1 mid-way through the 8th (eight-ball) over we were staring down the barrel of an unassailable 150+ target.
We then mounted a serious comeback thanks primarily to Lewis Drummond, who took 4/16 with his leggies, bowling most of the PwC middle order. Most noteworthy among his victims was Northamptonshire Women player Hayley Brown, who'd apparently been drafted in as the partner of one of the PwC guys; her previous innings against a Cambridge side was an unbeaten century, but she perished for a duck today, bowled around her legs going for a lap sweep. With Andy Owen (1/28) also getting a wicket (which made him the third player to pass 10,000 all-round points for Remnants), PwC's scoring had deccelerated appreciably as we'd finally gotten access to their fairly long "haven't played since school" tail.
This presented Daniel Mortlock (an uninspiring 0/18 from his first 2 overs) with the chance to bring himself for the final over for some "harvesting", an endeavour which was implausibly successful, four wickets coming from the over, including Dian LBW first ball and the opposition captain bowled off the final ball of the innings going for a scoop - he made good contact, only to smash the ball into the stumps. This left Daniel with much-improved figures of 4/25 and 26 wickets at 9.13 for the season (7th most for Remnants), although this is nowhere close to the top of the bowling averages which are currently led by Iqtedar Alam, with 5 wickets at the amazing average of 3.20.
The rapid flow of wickets also meant that the retired batters had come back in, giving Daniel a second chance to dismiss Chandan . . . who was up to the task, adding three more runs to his tally while remaining undismissed, the only member of the PwC line-up to achieve this. As noted by Faruk (in attendance to take photographs, still taking things easy after being hit in the head last week), nine of the ten wickets we took tonight were bowled, which is surely a club record (although modes of dismissal is one of the few things we don't have data on). It was also presumed that this was the first time two Remnants bowlers had taken four wickets in the same innings, but once again this rather ignores the sheer volume of cricket the club has played over the last four decades, as it had previously happened once in the 1980s, once in the 1990s and once in the noughties. We'd won all three of those matches comfortably, dismissing the opposition for double figures each time; but, with with a target of 128 to win and not much light, it was difficult to imagine such a thrashing - we'd be doing very well just to win.
The second innings started with Dian (1/16) taking a wicket in his first over, which would have been great except he was, of course, playing for PwC. We then had a good three-way partnership between Chris Badger (26 off 18 balls), Gaurav Patil (24 off 25 balls) and extras (26 off 13 balls). Even after losing a few more wickets we were at least in with a shout on 90/4 after 9 overs, meaning we needed 38 from 40 balls.
The natural guess was that light would be the decisive factor, but it turned out to be superb bowling by the PwC spinners, led by Heather Brown: while she doesn't seem to bowl regularly in the women's game, her wrist spin was too good for our middle order, and while her spell of 3/16 didn't quite match Lewis's earlier in the day, it had the advantage of winning the match for her team. While Phil Hastings (5 off 9 balls) hit her first ball to the boundary, that was to be the our last of the day, and Andy Owen (13 off 21 balls) was the only player other than Chris and Gaurav to make it to double figures. By the time the automatic pavilion lights had come on with a few overs to go the result of the match was in no doubt, but we did at least get to witness the an internal Young family battle as Lewis (2* off 3 balls) was able to outscore his father John (1 off 3 balls).
With the darkness now total and heavy rain setting in - could have done with that half an hour earlier - there was nothing for it but to go to the pub. Pleasingly, most of the team - as well as the two PwC turncoats and surprise visitor Chris McNeill - made it to The Castle for some beer-fuelled speculation about the forthcoming World Cup.