2023 Remnants dinner

This year's Remnants annual dinner was held in the garden room at The Alex on the evening of Friday, February 23, 2024, with sixteen of us enjoying the amusingly-named burgers in what is now a very familiar space.

Slightly less familiar were the events from almost a year ago being asked about in the quiz:

(To see the answers simply highlight the region below the questions with your mouse by dragging the cursor across the screen with the left button held down.)

Numbers game

1. Which four players made 16 Remnants appearances in 2023? (4 runs)

   Faruk Kara, John Moore, Daniel Mortlock and Joe White.

2. Who scored the most runs for the season and how many did they score? (2 runs)

   Temoor Khan, who scored 293 runs (at 58.60); a mark for being within 10 runs or to the closest guess.

3. Who broke the club record for fastest innings (of at least 30 runs) and what was his strike-rate? (2 runs)

   Felix Serby, who against NCI scored 37* off 12 balls for a strike-rate of 308.33.

4. Who had the best (innings) bowling figures for the season and what were they? (2 runs)

   Qaiser Ahmed, who took 4/2 against Fen Ditton.

5. Who topped the bowling averages (given a qualification of 5 wickets) and what was their average? (2 runs)

   Iqtedar Alam, who took 5 wickets at 5.00.

6. Who started the season by extending his "lead" for highest (i.e., worst) all-time bowling strike rate? Who had taken over this "title" by the end of the season? (2 runs)

   Seth Aycock, who started the season with a (record) strike-rate of ??.?? and finished it with a slightly improved strike-rate of 52.57, some way behind Dian Weerakonda, who finished his debut season with a strike-rate of 91.33.

   Captain's privilege

7. Who was sent in with instructions "not to get out LBW"? Were they successful? (2 runs)

   John Moore. And yes - he was bowled (second ball).

8. Who suggested that Daniel Mortlock was bringing himself on to bowl late in the first innings of games in order to get cheap wickets while the batters were slogging? What term did they coin for this tactic? (2 runs)

   Ben Stone, who referred to it as "harvesting".

9. Daniel bowled the penultimate or final over of the first innings four times during the season; how many wickets did he take from these 30 deliveries? (1 run)

   Daniel took 8/26 (i.e., an average of 3.25) from these 30 rather eventful deliveries.

   Start as you mean to go on

10. How did we lose an evening game at 12:54pm? (1 run)

    That was when Hari Kukreja announced (via WhatsApp) that he'd be playing for Grantchester against Remnants; he was the clear player of the match with 32* off 18 balls and 1/5 from his 3 (six-ball) overs.

11. Prior to 2023, when was the last time we won our first match of the season? (1 run)

    2018.

12. Why was the Fitz outfield unusually slow in some early season games? (1 run)

    Dave's ride-on mower had broken down, meaning he had to mow the grass using a manual push-along mower and, predictably, he didn't feel the need to undertake this task quite as often as normal.

    A bizarre collection of antiques and curios

13. How many Remnants made ducks against Trinity College High Table? (1 run)

    Five, equalling the club record - although for the first time we won.

14. Who gave themself out LBW? (1 run)

    Marcus Baker, who was so convinced he was plumb that he walked.

15. How should we have scored nine runs off one delivery? Why didn't we? (2 runs)

    The delivery was a two-run wide (hence a delivery) off which two byes were run, after which the fielder's throw hit the wicket-keeper's unused helmet (five penalty runs). Neither of (our) umpires spotted this, so the penalty runs weren't scored - although TK, captaining the opposition, attempted to signal this.

16. Who scored (almost) entirely in binary? (1 run)

    John Young, whose innings of 23* off 50 balls against Girton consisted of 28 zeros and 21 ones (with one two spoiling things).

17. Against who did we bowl three consecutive overs from the same end? And why? (2 runs)

    Against Girton, because the setting sun had made it impossible for the batters to see from one end.

18. Who made it to retirement almost exclusively in reverse sweeps? (1 run)

    Hari Kukreja, who scored 38* off 21 balls, against the Sharks.

19. Name four opposition teams, including a new one for 2023, which have three-letter acronym names. (4 runs)

    ARM, CAT, NCI, CCL (played just once) and now PwC.

20. Who or what are the Cambridgeshire Bustards? (1 run)

    The county friendly side.

Total: 35 runs.

The winners, with 17/35, were . . . er . . . the table on the right, including Joe, Phil, Sally, Chris, Faruk and Simon; fortunately it didn't matter too much as Daniel had forgotten to get the usual chocolate treats as a prize.

The Champagne Moment and the (now virtual) pickled egg award were awarded jointly to Tom Serby for his efforts against NCI at Parker's Piece in the two-innings end-of-season game: he did well to score 50* and 18 on what was the hottest September day on record; but then things got a bit too much for him and he ended the game by throwing up on the field (a moment he might be able to recreate by judicious mixing of the fizz and the eggs).