Report by Daniel Mortlock:
After our scheduled opposition for today, Bassingbourn, pulled out on the grounds that they (or at least their organiser, our own James Robinson) are on holiday, Rahul Jhawar thus offered to assemble a charity side as part of his efforts to support Save The Rhino. We thus found ourselves taking on "Rahul's Rhinos", a side that was mostly drawn from St Giles's junior ranks before being embellished with three Remnants (Tom, Neil and Saurav) who may - or may not - feel a sense of kinship with creatures whose "outline is characterised by a pronounced hump", are "sedentary, semi-social and territorial" but "communicate vocally, using a wide range of sounds from squeaking to snarling or wailing", "routinely rest during the hottest part of the day" and are "sedentary, semi-social and territorial", but "are surprisingly agile and can run very fast, up to 40 km/h for short periods".
For the first time in living memory we lost the toss and so, predictably, were invited to field. Any hopes we had of harvesting some cheap wickets - Rahul had claimed it was a side mainly of bowlers - were dashed in Joe White's first over, which saw one of Rahul's younger Rhnios hit four boundaries, each from a different type of shot. Next over Neil also hit a dismissive boundary off Max Ayliffe (2/33), before being bowled having scored almost half as many runs (4 vs. 9) from 6 balls as he managed from 47 balls last week. Joe (1/25) also dismissed a Remnant, having Tom brilliantly caught behind by Martin Heginbottom, standing up to the stumps; but otherwise the batters were dominant for the next hour.
After 15 overs the Rhinos were charging on 130/3, with Saurav in particular swinging freely. We brought Max back in the hope of slowing the scoring, although his over began with a another dismissively lofted drive; TK and Daniel set off in pursuit, TK winning the race and heeding Daniel's request to flick the ball back to him; the only problem was that TK flicked too hard, the ball sailing over Daniel's head for the second time, now in the opposite direction; the batters could have easily come back for a third run with Daniel now chasing the ball back towards the bowler, but the confusion of the situation held sway and the batters settled for two. Martin followed up with the correct 'keeper's response, informing the batter that by declining that run and retaining the strike he was sure to get out next ball. Unperturbed, he connected with yet another expansive drive . . . straight into Daniel's hands at mid-on. From there we mounted something of a comeback, with TK (2/10) getting the prize wicket of Saurav, and the Rhinos' scoring rate reduced to "just" a run a ball for the final quarter of their innings.
New batters Qaiser Ahmed and CJ Barrie started slowly, in large part due to Saurav's effective leg-spin, before also starting to hit out. Their efforts were helped by the fact that the Rhino's were so committed to their cause that they were putting their bodies on the line. First one of their younger players strained his groin going for a catch; and then Neil failed to get out of the way of a hard-hit cover drive, the ball slamming into his leg with a sickening crack, after which he went down as if shot by a poacher. There followed a lot of writhing which had most us pretty worried until it was established that it was a non-structural (if still very painful) soft tissue impact, and not a potentially much nastier knee injury.
By this stage the question was not if we'd win but by how much - there was excited speculation about a rare 10-wicket win, which would have to be our highest such chase, well beyond TTP's total of 152 we eased past back in 2000. We passed that mark in the 17th over when CJ smashed the ball into the Oxford Road gardens, in the process going to retirement having hit 43* off 24 balls. This took CJ's season's reocrd to 166 runs undismissed off 77 balls, prompting Cam to ask "Is CJ going to get an average this season?" to which the obvious answer is: hopefully not. CJ's "retirement party" six also extended our "opening" partnership to 157 runs, equal third on the all-time list and, thanks to three retirements, our first to involve five players, Martin Heginbotham now having come to the crease.
Martin, along with Qaiser, had 20 deliveries to score the remaining 7 runs, a surely trivial task . . . but for the fact that the replacement ball was much more bowler-friendly, seaming and spinning dramatically. Add in the fact that the light was now very poor and it was suddenly a different game, as Martin immediately found out when Saurav's first delivery with the new ball turned past his outside edge and took the top of off stump. Whereas we'd scored at more than 9.42 runs an over up to CJ's retirement, our scoring rate plummeted to a dismal 3.00 for the rest of the innings. When Qaiser (16 off 18 balls) also perished in the gloom and then new batters Max (0* off 5 balls) and Daniel (2* off 4 balls) found themselves unable to beat the fielders . . . well, no, don't worry - we did eventually prevail, the winning runs coming off the last ball of the penultimate over.
More important than the result was, of course, the money raised, which totalled £185.00, including £27.00 from Rahul's wicket-keeper, who'd agreed to donate £3.00 per by bye conceded.