Report by Daniel Mortlock:
This evening was the cricketing equivalent of soaking in a hot bath. The weather was perfect - sunny and warm but not too hot - and the ascendancy we established in the first few overs of the game was never seriously threatened, meaning we could share the batting and bowling around in the way one always hopes to in an evening friendly: tallying the balls faced by the batters and deliveries by the bowlers, the least anyone got to do was still a long way from being a TFC, with CJ blasting his way to the retirement score off 13 balls and Naveen bowling three (six-ball) overs.
Given the conditions and our line-up we were very keen to bat first, something we probably could have wangled on the grounds that NCI were quorate before us; but we waited to have a proper toss and once their skipper (erstwhile Remnant Jono Beagle) called incorrectly we were away. Saurav Dutta (20 off 22 balls) played nicely but wasn't quite able to calibrate his shots, with the result that he - and opening partner Cam Petrie - ended up having to run 5 threes. Cam (32* retired off 23 balls) and CJ Barrie (31* off 13 balls) had no such difficulties, smashing 7 fours and 3 sixes between them, establishing a dominance that we never ceded.
Things then calmed down a little as Seb Hammersley (31* retired off 22 balls), Marcus Baker (19 off 12 balls), Chris Badger (25* off 22 balls) and Lewis Drummond (6* off 6 balls) played in a slightly more classical style - although no less effectively. The only real drama came off the final ball of the innings, which Badge had cut to the long boundary for an easy two - he'd ambled the second run and was starting to take his gloves off when suddenly Lewis came haring down the pitch calling for what was clearly a non-existant third run, the ball now being in the cover fielder's hands following a relay throw. Chris heroically responded to the call even though the only plausible result would be to halve his season's average from 107.00 to 53.50, and sure enough the ball was in the bowler's hands with Chris still yards from safety . . . except the take was fumbled and somehow the run was completed. That left us on 178/2, comfortably our highest total of the season - and equivalent to about 200 in a non-retirement game.
Which was just as well as, perhaps somewhat relaxed with such a big total on the board, we served up many more loose deliveries than has been typical this season - although it was suggested post-match by one of the NCI players that our bad balls were so bad that they were wides, whereas their bad balls had been reachable. The merits of such claims notwithstanding, it was perhaps more important that we took wickets regularly - NCI's biggest partnership was the 27 their openers put on, and none of their batters made it to retirement. Openers Naveen Chouksey (0/21) and Daniel Mortlock (1/34) gave a bit too much pace to hit - as well as being a bit leg-side - so we turned to our slower bowlers, who did brilliantly: Lewis (1/12 from his superbly fizzed leggies); Iqtedar Alam (2/23, including NCI's most commanding batter); Saurav Dutta (1/8, with his leggies that the umpire complained when he taken off); and, for the sake of narrative consistency, Paul Jordan (1/14, whose pace decreased steadily during his four over spell, one presumes for tactical reasons as opposed to just getting tired). Our fielding - or, more specifically, the stopping, as distinct from the throwing - was also pretty good: Badge impressed with a full-length diving stop in the second-last over; CJ, Saurav and Naveen repeatedly cut-off hard-hit shots that otherwise would have gone to the boundary; Marcus completed a good stumping off Iqtedar after the ball had kept low; and Daniel took a catch off Iqtedar at backward square-leg that was noteworthy only because it was the result of high-precision field-placement in response to the batter's favoured leg-side flicks.
We thus completed a single-season trifecta of victories over NCI, something we've managed just twice previously (against The Globe in 1998 and The Computer Lab in 2005), albeit a rarity mainly because we seldom even play three games against a team in a season. Indeed, we've only once ever played a team four times - which was NCI last year - and we've played them an astonishing 15 times in the last five seasons. This is not, however, just some an intriguing Zaltzman-style trivia, but actually a significant cause for concern - the main reason for this trend is that NCI have repeatedly been able to get teams together at short notice when other clubs have been unable to put out a full side, something which is becoming increasingly common. So it's quite possible that by 2030 Remnants, unlike the UK, will have achieved "net zero" in form of a fixture list which is entirely comprised of Remnants vs. NCI games - there are worse things, to be sure, but it would be rather like staying in the bath for too long.