Report by Daniel Mortlock:
A week ago today the Remnants season got underway with one of those magic evenings when everything was just perfect, from the conditions to the players' performances and even the field placings. The only problem was the sense that things might have gone too well - had we burned through all our luck for the season? No, as it turns out: this evening went almost as well, the only difference being that we were probably a little behind in the game until the end of the first innings.
Having won the toss (natch) and chosen to bat in what seemed like ideal conditions, the fact that all our top order struggled initially against a variety of bowlers suggested it wasn't such a batter-friendly track afterall. Saurav Dutta (2 off 5 balls), Max Ayliffe (6 off 10 balls) and Qaiser Ahmed (a golden duck on the back of 75 at the weekend) got out before they got in; and Temoor Khan (8* off his first 13 balls), Tom "S" Serby (4* off his first 11 balls) and Marcus Baker (2* off his first 8 balls) clearly found runs hard to come by initially. Maybe we were in for a re-run of one of those 1980s games where teams comfortably defended totals of 70-odd? Tom (16 off 19 balls) and Marcus (15 off 17 balls) were both dismissed just as they were starting to score with some freedom, all of which served to put TK's innings into perspective: repeatedly coming down the track and hitting the ball to both sides of the wicket seemingly at will, his rampage of 53* (off 47 balls) was stopped only by mandatory retirement.
Despite TK's efforts, we were very much in danger of being restricted to an uncompetitive total: with just 21 of our 120 deliveries left we were still yet to make it into triple figures, stuck on 99/4 with two new batters at the crease. Joe White (9* off 7 balls) did his part, primarily by giving the strike to his partner, Rahul Jhawar, who turned the game on its head with an explosive innings of 29* off 14 balls, who finished our (and hence his) innings with two massive leg-side sixes.
Heading out into the field with a total of 137 on the board, the game was suddenly ours to lose - which it briefly seemed we were going to attempt to do as (just like last week) we started with a waist-high no ball. This time the culprit was surprise spearhead Pete Ames - we wanted an extra over from the end with the long leg-side boundary which meant starting with spin - but, just like Joe last Wednesday, he recovered beautifully to finish up with tidy figures of 0/12. At the other end Joe (0/9) was even more economical; and while the NCI openers looked solid, they were finding it even more difficult to get themselves in than our batters had in the first innings. By the time they were dismissed for 13 off 33 balls and 15 of 25 balls the game was probably already decided in our favour. The first of these wickets was taken by Faruk Kara (1/13), who let out an uncharacteristically animalistic roar when Qaiser held onto a regulation catch at mid-on; we were initially a bit puzzled by this behaviour, but the explanation was that it was Faruk's 300th Remnants wicket, something he had been forced to wait eight months for after being hit in the face (technically a drop!) at the end of last season.
After this we once again entered "can do no wrong" territory as Daniel Mortlock (2/10), Saurav (1/11), Rahul (2/10) and Max (1/5) all took wickets and Qaiser (0/1) found himself bowling to five slips. There were no edges, so we didn't get a chance to show off our (possibly non-existant) close catching skills; but the out-fielding was top-notch, with guns both young and old making lots of great stops. The star was Saurav, whose jack-in-the-box energy stopped lots of runs and also put him in position to take a superb fingertip catch diving forward at mid-on. With two wickets to go with his runs, Rahul seemed to be the clear player of the match, a status he could have cemented had he held onto either of two extremely difficult chances that came his way; but both went to ground, meaning Rahul was quickly demoted all the way down to kit-packing duties.