Having played no cricket for six months, a practice game was in order before taking on the big boys of Junior 2, and who better to warm up against than Remnants? The answer to that is probably ``just about anyone'' as we were viciously thrashed by a combination of solid batting, devilish treachery and our own rustiness. (Never mind the fact that it was also the Remnants' first game for the year.)
In the field our fifteen overs went completely unrewarded, the only wicket coming in the form of a run out. One might think this was representative of our good fielding, but no -- at least half a dozen catches were dropped, and that's not even counting the near misses that maybe we could have stretched that little extra for. Ordinarily names would not be mentioned at this point, but three of the chances went to one Rob Harvey who, whilst he has played a few games from Romsey over the years, was a Remnants sub today. This would be suspicious enough to begin with, but there's more to come . . .
We set off in pursuit of an unlikely 143 to win with Rich Savage (25) and Phil Marshall (17) scoring at the required pace of 1.2 runs per ball, but then the first Romsey collapse of the season occured. But notable in this was the rather handy work of one Robert "Judas" Harvey, now fielding for Remnants -- this time when a sharp chance came his way it was neatly pouched, of course. Andy Owen (23) made some consolation runs towards the end of the innings, but by then it was too late, and we finished up not even getting into triple figures.
Not an auspicious start to the year, but then again we weren't really trying . . .