Report by Daniel Mortlock:
When one thinks of the "opposition" in cricket, it's usually the other team which comes to mind . . . but this season the real battle has been against the unseen forces which seem determined to prevent us getting any games at all. Following the five consecutive wash-outs in May, our planned opposition cancelled last week when PwC's eleven was down-sized to a three; and then this week we lost our venue as the King's College groundsman informed us that "the uni now need the ground this Wednesday [. . .] they are being very vague but we obviously have to put there cricket first." In an ordinary season we probably would have just left it at that, but everyone's so desperate for a game that the Remnants gestalt went into action, with Simon Godsill securing the use of Corpus Christi's Leckhampton ground (where we last played in 1995). For most of the day the conditions looked likely to be about as miserable as in last night's aborted game, but in the end we got to play a full 20x6's game under the cold glow of the moodily setting sun.
Our actual opposition were TK's Centaurs, a mix of Cambourne league players and children (presumably theirs). Unfortunately, one of these was, at 12, too young to satisfy the ECB's Safe Hands requirements and so was informed that he wouldn't be playing, news that was met with was a solid hour of high-quality pouting while half-heartedly kicking a ball around the boundary in the most desultory manner (i.e., pretty much the same response as most of us have had of late when yet another wash-out has been announced). As usual when playing against one of TK's sides, the real action was all pre-match, with his standard claims of only having a couple of regular players and needing to field first to give all the kids a go - and definitely not so that they'd have a clear target around which to marshall their batting resources (which were considerable, including Remnants regulars Rahul and Qaiser, the GEANT batter we haven't been able to dismiss this decade, and of course TK himself).
Our agreement to bat first didn't look too clever initially: the Centaurs' bowlers had the new ball hooping around all over the place; and we collapsed to 14/3 in the 6th over. JP Joubert and Tom Serby then set about a dogged rescue effort in difficult conditions - even once the ball stopped swinging there was still the problem that the long grass resulting even perfectly-timed shots pulling up short of the boundary, something Faruk had predicted would be a key factor. While our running was a little unenterprising - there's always a second run to a 13-year-old on the boundary - it was the key partnership of the match. After Tom was bowled (for 31 off 37 balls), Andy Owen (12* off 13 balls) picked up where he'd left off, while at the other end JP had switched into a most impressive top gear, at one point smacking four huge sixes in the space of 11 deliveries. One more single took him to retirement on 50* off 43 balls, a potentially match-winning innings that stood in stark contrast with his definitely match-winning innings of 50* off 43 balls against NCI last week. (The possibility that JP is some sort cyborg that's gotten stuck in a repeating loop can be allayed by the fact that his only other Remnants innings this year was a very different 49 off 42 balls against The Dobblers Inn.)
The Centaurs' pursuit of our total began with an extraordinary display of multi-tasking by TK, who spent the first few overs simultaneously umpiring, scoring, captaining, and ready to go in at number three. It was just about possible when he was standing at square-leg, but the folly was revealed when he had to signal a wide . . . to himself, and then had to acknowledge his own call while updating the score. TK was evidently too busy with all these tasks to notice that Remnants had twelve fielders for the first two overs: after a no-show (eventually traced to a confusing instruction on WhatsApp), we'd been proceeding under the not unreasonable belief that we had only ten players, and so were once again thankful that "shoeless" David Ayliffe was in attendance to watch son Max . . . the only problem being that Max had effectively turned up "on spec" - he wasn't on the team sheet and, by his own admission, had never even indicated his availability. Still, it was a good thing that he'd come along, as his tight opening spell (of 1/19), along with almost unplayable bowling by Joe White (4 overs, 2 maidens, 2/7, with just one run off the bat) restricted the Centaurs to just 29/3 after 8 overs.
A good start, to be sure, although we'd been in even worse trouble on 27/3 at the same stage in our innings. And where we had our two-letter hero in JP, the Centaurs now had TK. He got out of the blocks quicker than anyone (including JP) had managed during the game; the difference was that he lacked the support that Tom and then Andy had provided during our innings, and we were thus able to deny him the strike - he faced just 28 of the 74 balls deliverd while he was at the crease. The stars here were our slower bowlers: Faruk Kara (2/22) was evidently proving so difficult to play that the scorers tried to deny him a fourth over on the spurious grounds that he'd already had his allotment; and Vishal Vasanthakumar (2/11) began in a dramatic fashion by taking wickets with his first two deliveries. When one of the Centaurs' junior contingent, Diya Naresh, came out to face the hat-trick ball it seemed stars were aligned . . . only for the batter to confidently drive the ball through the covers, demonstrating nicely why she's in the Cambridgeshire junior squad.
With our victory now assured, Daniel Mortlock brought himself back on to finish things off - and to try to arrest a downward trend that had seen him take one less wicket each game since last year, his most recent figures being 4/25, 3/4 2/10 and 1/19. Daniel could have had no complaints about bagging a 0-for after what was a pretty pedestrian spell - he didn't bowl badly, but neither did trouble any of the batters - only to instead got a season's worth of luck compressed into three overs. His first delivery - an anodyne half-volley to Qaiser - was driven straight back past the bowler . . . but with such power that the umpire couldn't get out of the way, turning what would otherwise have been a four into a dot. Then a couple of similar drives were mistimed slightly, allowing Julius Rix and then Max to take a pair of fantastic catches. Finally, off the last ball of the game, the Centaurs' youngest player grounded his bat outside his crease, giving 'keeper Andy Owen his second stumping of the day. As cricketers appreciate more acutely than most, there are "lies, damned lies, and statistics", but Daniel's completely undeserved - or at least unearned - figures of 3/6 need a fourth category all their own.
