Corpus II vs Linacre, May 31 2005
Summary: We won by six wickets with 2.4 overs to spare.
The team: another all Linacre XI, with new cap Russell Ewings and sub fielder Thabit bringing the number of Linacre players taking the field this season to 20! Without Saranya, Chris Higham stepped in to keep, and conceded only 3 byes (even so, we still want you back ASAP Mr Sridhar), and Stuart Hunter made a welcome return to the side after illness (the less said about people who ducked out because of galley-slavery week the better).
The report:
On the day before the game, the Corpus skipper sent a message to his email list reading “It’s looking like a good side, and I’m confident we can take Linacre to school on this one.” This meant war! A game that had all the makings of this season’s grudge match was on. The Corpus II side contained quite a few familiar faces, known from 1st XI matches or from football, so we were keen to show them exactly who needed to do a little bit of homework.
Given that we’re a better bowling side than a batting side, I always like to chase totals. Once again I lost the toss, and once again they decided to bat - who needs luck? Jason and Richard bowled tightly, but without much luck (catches were put down, which could have been costly against a stronger side), and we let one of their openers hang around for far too long. Rob was, once again, tight and successful, and Adam, Stuart, and Asif bowled well, with Stuart taking the crucial wicket of Anup just when he was getting into his stride. They set a total of 101, which was a sub-par total on a half-decent track (despite endless Corpus complaints, and a few shooters, it wasn’t that bad), but provided us with our first challenging total of the season. No-one’s scored more against us this season, and it’s a testimony to some good bowling and some timely wickets that we didn’t concede more against a few good 1st XI batsmen.
Luckily, we had a few good batsmen of our own, and their bowling was just wasn’t deep enough. After seeing off the openers, we stretched out and managed to reel in the total without too much fuss. Bobby got a horrible shooter along the deck which bowled him, Russell was far too eager to take a single when his tired and unfit skipper never even thought of a run, Jes got a good ball (and a good catch) early on, and the (very) tired and unfit skipper was finally run out himself. After a mini-collapse, losing three wickets for five runs, Jason and Adam knocked the ball around nicely, and the final result was never in much doubt after that. Finally, Gamsa (once again smeared with blue suntan cream that made him look diseased) hit the winning run with another of those uncoorinated flails he thinks of as a reverse sweep [note to those watching: this was the winning run, not the subsequent wide. I got 43, not 42, as I was run out coming back for a second run. Thus runs the famous saying: He who writes the match report edits the scorecard].
A great victory! And if this is to have been our final league game of the season, then a fantastic league campaign couldn’t have ended better! Time to relax for a bit, and enjoy some friendlies.