Pembroke II vs Linacre, May 24, 2005
Summary: We won by five wickets with 5.1 overs to spare.
The team: after a confusing afternoon, in which the size of the team dropped to 7 (at one point), we actually ended up with 12 players, Vik technically played as a sub fielder (with Asif and Adam injured, that’s fair enough on the opposition) but is still awarded his - titlular - Linacre cap. We played another two new players this week, with Ian Grainge and Dan Woolaston also making their debuts. The rest of the team consisted of: Tumelo, Asif (a welcome return from injury), Chris, Richard, Rob, Jason, Adam and me.
The report:
The last match report began: “Given that Saranya had to leave half way through, I was desperate to win the toss and field.” This one begins the same way! Asif won the toss for us, and we fielded first. Jason bowled brilliantly for no reward at all, and Richard bowled, um, slightly less brilliantly in his opening spell, although he did take a wicket with an absolute beauty, which broke the bail (in fairness, his second spell was much better, maybe he was used to his shiny new shoes by then). Gamsa’s bowling produced a fine stumping from Saranya, and Rob bowled his usual tight, effective, stuff from the other end (I’m starting to take the standard of our bowling too much for granted, I think, it was very good today). Ian bowled some nice stuff, and will hopefully be playing for us for some time, but the star of the bowling performance was Chris, who took four wickets in his four overs, including their dangerous late call-up who came in at 8. Saranya took three (three!) stumpings, which I’m sure is unfair at this level. Saranya: if you want to bowl more, you’d better start fumbling them, because I’m not letting you bowl if you’re going to keep like that. We ran through them quickly, and good fielding (Dan’s sliding stop sticks in the mind) was first rate. I think we conceded a grand total of four boundaries.
In the end, they were 72 all out, and we were never going to have too much trouble getting the runs. That said, we were still a bit lazy when we batted, and that could cost us against better sides, especially if yours truly is going to get out to pies like that again. Still, we knocked the runs off with 5 wickets in hand (Jason and Adam - who was 26 not out - batting flamboyantly at the end), with the main highlight being Adam tying himself in knots to hit their best bowler (who was bowling some nice outswingers) through 3rd man by reverse sweeping. Given that the ball wasn’t going to bounce low enough to allow a man of Gamsa’s, ahem, “stature” to sweep with confidence, it turned out to be more of a reverse waft, but it brightened up the end of the game, and cost Rob a pint, so it was probably worth it. The poor attempt at blue warpaint, however, was not. A more feeble attempt at face painting has not been seen since Dominic Cork last played for England. Cut it out!
All told, a good result! Onwards, then, to Corpus II, which looks like being this season’s grudge match.