Mandarins 89 all out
Charlatans 90 for 1 (after 14.3 overs)
Charlatans won by 9 wickets.
For the second year running, the decision to reduce
this game from 40 overs to 35 overs proved to be academic, as the
Mandarins were inserted and crept to a feeble 89 all out inside 31
overs. We could blame the fact that we were at
least one batsman short (12 year old Harry Forman was a noble stand-in
at number 11), and that skipper Dan Forman had needed to bring Jeremy
Jarvis out of retirement. Or we could blame the accurate Charlatans
bowling which rarely gave an opportunity to hit
to the short boundary on the far side. Then there was the pitch – slow
and low as always, and seaming all over the place (at least for their
bowlers). Or it could have been our running between the wickets. Lowen
set the tone, calling Jarvis for a suicidal
single to backward point when it wasn’t his call, to leave Jarvis a
couple of yards short; later in the innings there was a Hurst/Eastaway
mix-up followed by a McIntyre/Forman sharp call that proved to be too
sharp, making three run outs out of ten dismissals.
Or it could have been the misfortune of losing McInerny, who was
batting confidently when he clipped the ball sweetly to backward square
only to find the one Charlatans fielder who seemed able to catch on the
day. Whatever, it meant a return to one of those
sub-hundred totals that we hoped we’d left behind in 2016.
The ball was sufficiently unused that we had the
option to stick with it instead of taking a new ball. There were as
many opinions on this as there were players…“A new ball might move
more”…”but it’ll go the boundary faster”….”but we need
to take wickets”…”the spinners might prefer it softer”…”surely you’d
never turn down the chance to use a new ball?”. In the end, with no
bowler expressing strong preference either way, we opted to take the new
ball. And lo, the ball did indeed fly to the
boundary faster. The first six came in the fourth over off Hurst,
though the batsman was then bowled by a beauty next ball. A strong lbw
shout was turned down in the next over (looked plumb to me – Ed) but
that was it – not a snifter of a chance thereafter.
Number 3 batted as if he had a party to get to in ten minutes,
sprinting for twos and threes and several times almost lapping his
partner. By the time first change McIntyre came on, Charlatans need
about 15 to win, and No.3 began launching into reverse sweeps
– frankly by now it felt as if they were just taking the p*ss.
It was Dan Forman who bowled the final over (or three balls of it anyway) as Charlatans completed the formalities.
In the early years of this fixture, these used to
be close, nailbiting, high-scoring games. That seems like a distant
memory now.
Rob Eastaway