Report by Daniel Mortlock:
It was off to the bucolic expanse of Trinity College's playing fields this afternoon to take on Cam Petrie's High Table side . . . which was Cam-light but Remnants-heavy, with Iqtedar Alam, Simon Godsill and Rob McFarlane legitimately in attendance and JP and Rahul "conveniently" transformed into crusty academics.
Having won the toss (again) and chosen to bat, our innings started off about as badly as possible, Temoor Khan opting to deal with Iqtedar's variations by striding down the wicket . . . and then onwards to the pavilion, as the wicket-keeper completed the most triumphal of stumpings - the only question was whether the batters crossed. It was easy to imagine Iqtedar again running rampant as he did against us back in 2023, but that was in our pre-nuclear age without CJ "Little Boy" Barrie available to lay waste to opposition attacks, something Iqtedar experienced today as CJ clubbed 25 runs from his third (six-ball) over. When CJ also hit his next ball, from Rahul, to the boundary he reached the retirement score of 40* off just 16 deliveries, at which point our total was 43/1 off 5.1 overs.
Astonishingly, CJ's wasn't the most remarkable batting effort of our innings, a title which went to Neil Grover, who essayed a remarkable array of shots, including reverse sweeps, ramps, correct forward defensives, wild cross-bat logs, and classical drives. Unfortunately, most of these shots failed to connect; the result was an extraordinary innings for which the full sequence, . . . . . . . . 1 . . . . . . . . 1 . . . 1 . 1 1 . . . 1 . . 1 . . . . . . . . . . 1 . 1 . W, is Morse code for "9 off 47 balls". This makes an appearance at number 10 on the (incomplete) list of slowest (20+ ball) innings; but perhaps a better comparator is that Neil's strike rate of 19.14 was less than half that of any other innings of at least this length (John Young's 23* off 55 balls in a low chase against Girton last year).
Fortunately, Neil's partners were able to score a little more freely, Ev Fox's cameo of 9 off 8 balls being followed up by a superb debut innings by Usman Khan, TK's cousin who was visiting Cambridge this week. He'd already made an important club-level contribution by recording TK's dismissal and publicising it on the various Khan family WhatsApp groups; he now showed that his tape-ball experiences in Canada could be translated to Cambridge evening cricket as he mixed powerful attacking shots with disciplined defense to score 41* off 25 balls before joining CJ in retirement.
The net result of our bizarrely yin and yang innings was a total of 125/5: maybe 20 runs fewer than we wanted; but also something we could work with - especially if Trinity had its usual "variable standard" batting line-up. The sense was that the game would come down to a few key wickets, the first of which was JP, opening up. Max Ayliffe explicitly asked for the opportunity to bowl at him, so got the new ball and made superb use of it by bowling a 24-yard delivery from beside the umpire that squared up a bewildered JP and crashed into his off stump - perhaps ball of the summer so far. At the other end Naveen Chouksey (2/15) continued his fabulous season (9 wickets at 20.00 so far), thanks in part to a solid catch off a skier by a rather tired Neil at mid-wicket.
We then entered a frustrating period during which wickets fell, but by a rather expensive purchase scheme: Faruk Kara (1/33) was hit for four consecutive boundaries by Hume Fisher before inducing him to pull the ball straight to TK at cow corner; this sequence was then repeated in miniature by John Moore (1/9), who conceded a few boundaries before having the recently-arrived Cam brilliantly caught by Max diving forward at square-leg. Important as those breakthroughs were, TCHT still almost certainly had a won game, as they needed just 20 runs from 6 overs. We now turned to three of our most economical bowlers, and TK (0/9), Daniel Mortlock (0/21) and Joe White (1/8) all did brilliantly, largely restricting Simon and Rahul to dots and singles - beyond this there were just three twos during the next five overs, although one of these was turned into a three after a direct hit run out attempt resulted in the most annoying of overthrows. We thus managed to take the game to the final over, albeit with Trinity now needing just three runs to win. Joe beat the bat with his first ball; and then Rahul went for a rather uncontrolled slog off the second, the ball arcing towards CJ at deep mid-off . . . but it had a bit too much carry and it was quickly clear that the batters would get at least two . . . and they then went for the winning run which only the most perfect throw would have been able to stop.
Our defeat notwithstanding, it was a highly dramatic game of cricket played on a gorgeous evening in a wonderful setting. Usman was apparently most impressed - nothing like this in Canada - and was kind enough to compliment Daniel on his bowling:
"It's great to see someone bowling like that at your age."
"Hmmm, that depends on what you think my age is."
"Um, fifty-five?"
Usman has, sadly, been recalled to Canada for an emergency cultural sensitivity training course and so has been robbed of the chance of batting eleven and fielding at fine-leg next for Remnants week.