Jags 141-5 (Ant 36, Horner 35, Threadgold 25, Hasan 3-27) beat Qualcomm 117-10 (Kumar 43, Hasan 31, Bennett 3-24) by 24 runs.
Man of the Match - James Horner
Work, family, building works and the heatwave have all delayed my writing of this particular match report, which will inevitably have to be abbreviated as my memory has faded between the match and the writing of this. We also recently lost a fixture from our schedule owing to some bad luck with college grounds, so the Jags have been less busy the last fortnight.
Qualcomm our opponents for this evening are a famous chip designer and manufacturer, putting their silicon into a lot of mobile phones, tablets and laptops and the like.
Not the sort of chips I tend to focus on
Queens again is always good fun with new opposition to boot. Owing to the aforementioned work commitments I missed the start of the game against Qualcomm, no matter, we normally have so much batting in our team that there is a queue of openers waiting to take my spot at the top of the order, and most of them are more capable, seeing as they take an actual guard and don't look like Shrek taking up cricket.
Me scaring the opposition bowlers
Anyway, cricket. Parrish and Ant opened and scored some runs. Matt, who is having a spot of bad luck lately hit a 4, before managing to use the bottom of his boot to deflect it onto his own stumps. That is an innovative way to get out, skip.
Ant and James Horner than came together and the things I remember were Ant cracking some excellent legside and long on stuff. James hitting a wonderful 6 into the hedge at Queens, the hedge that is the repository of most of the cricket balls in the world. Some excellent running, including Ant running 3, and actually pushing for it. Ant bending over, wheezing, us abusing him from the bench, and him saying, "I swallowed a fly". James smiting one to the offside with the disdain of a man swatting a fly. It was a top partnership, in all honesty.
James was the first to perish, and James is good at comedy when it comes to getting out. He tried a ramp shot and missed. So he tried a sweep and missed. So he tried a reverse sweep and was bowled. Dan strolled out and forced Ant to run even more - I swear Dan and Ant batting is like some evil combination of spin class and interval training in a film montage sequence. You can see the look of terror in Ant's eyes as Dan strolls out absolutely determined to get Ant fit by the end of the innings pushing non-existent singles, 2's and 3's.
Run Ant, you maggot!
The scoring continued at quite a clip, with Dan mullering one over square and Ant eventually falling caught to mid on ish - I'm still not sure if he chipped it up on purpose in order to end the continuous shuttle runs to be honest. Dan and Phillips shared a decent little run, before one of them fell - Dan's strike rate was mega tonight throughout. Dan got bowled by someone, James Barker went out to play, and Phillips was eventually bowled too. I briefly popped out for a cameo with James, hitting 7 from 3 of the last 4 balls of the innings - I was still on my work zoom call till pretty much putting my pads on. 141-5, it felt like a competitive total - although we'd likely have wanted 10 more - as Qualcomm did some good work limiting scoring in later overs and Hasan had a strong game with the ball.
Opening the bowling were Tyler and Brett, and they did a mad good job, limiting early scoring and each removing one of the openers with top of the stumps unplayable sort of stuff, Tyler top of off and Brett top of middle. Tyler continued in this vein, hostile and direct, and was talking about his 5/for within his first over. The agreed upon format was 15/8 ball overs and normally that means 3 per bowler, but we understood that as long as you had 5 bowlers, a bowler could do 4 overs. Tyler smelt blood, and saw two caught by James Barker at mid ish on - in both cases having tried to strangle the scoring. The youth team combo absolutely shredded the top order. Matt, standing up for most of the innings like the ninja keeper he is, definitely contributing by getting in their heads.
Liam, not to be outdone, was bowling like a demon, and he eventually got the one of the top 5 who had dared to try and hang on, bowled I recall by an in-swinger. Then with the change of bowlers to Kingsmill and Barker there came the first partnership of the Qualcomm innings. Hasan, the outstanding player on their side, was joined by Kumar and they set about forging a partnership, taking a bit of a shine to Barker and Kingsmill in the process.
Throughout this entire process though it must be said there was run really outstanding fielder in our midst. James Horner had an absolute stormer, point and in midwicket, he dived full stretch twice that I can remember to stop any runs, stopped at least one certain boundary that I can recall, and didn't make a single mistake.
It was not, however, without controversy, which seems to be a running theme with our league games this year. The batsman who eventually got 43 runs and got Qualcomm close, was on about 4 when Barker bowled and he obviously edged it behind to the keeper. Not a small or faint edge, but a healthy nick. James, Matt, me, a few others, we all just celebrated, it wasn't even an appeal. The umpire was unmoved and the batsman just looked down at the ground refusing to make eye contact with anyone before in the next over admitting he'd nicked it. Goodness me we gave him some crap for the rest of his innings, not helped by him choosing to be their top scorer and the reason they got close.
In the end it got briefly tense, before Will extracted Hasan, caught inevitably by Horner - or Jonty as we should call him. The game ended with a flurry of run outs - Ant sorted one. The controversial batsman tried to pinch strike and then was popped out by Tyler and trudged off to lots and lots and lots of "cheerio", "thanks for coming", "top sportsmanship", "keep walking" and the like. It got a bit shirty over this to be honest, which is always a shame. Parrish finished things with a run out from the keeper's end, and that was that.
A word on My Bennett here, he was a close call for man of the match, but James Horner's runs, and incredibly athletic fielding just pipped it. 3-24 on any other day would be a certainty for the gong though, so apologies T - you can't get it every week.
Also, a word on sportsmanship. It is critical to low level cricket, as with tight decisions it is very hard for anyone other than one or two players to know if they are out. It is disappointing to get out when batting, but not walking when you know you are out risks disrupting the good natured spirit of things and turning a game from an enjoyable pastime into a slightly tempestuous affair - as happened here. It is even more galling when, as happened to us the other week, a strong batsman isn't given out or doesn't walk when quite obviously they are out.
I suspect I can speak for all the Jags when I say, if we are out and we know it, all of us would walk whatever our role or the game situation. If we grounded a catch, we would admit it. We'd all rather lose fairly, than win in unsporting fashion - and ay time we encounter this sort of uncivilised behaviour - we remember.
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