After an off-season which included net sessions for the first time in about a decade, it might have been expected that we'd get off to a quick start in 2006, but no amount of training can guarantee dismissing the opposition's best batsman with the first ball of the season, so that has to be regarded as a bit of a bonus. After Daniel Mortlock (1/17) and Dave Clark (1/13) had gotten rid of the openers, Roy Page (1/16), Arnie Garside (2/9), Andy Owen (1/5) and Chetan Lad (1/22 with some very classy-looking offies in his first Romsey game) were all penetrative to varying degrees; the only casualty was Jim Higginson (0/28), who was brought back to Earth with a thump after getting three wickets in his first over of the season yesterday. The one problem was the surfeit of loose balls that we all served up -- these were pulled and cut to the boundary with monotonous regularity, and Remnants thus managed to score at more than a run a ball without too much difficulty.
That was a stark contrast to our innings, which seemed to be defined by difficulties, both in scoring runs and just staying in. Of the top order only John Gull made it into double figures, but his 12 occupied an uncharacteristic 21 balls, and he scored faster than anyone else early on. After that we seemed to tread water, with our numbers 2, 3 and 4 scoring just 12 runs between them off a mammoth 49 deliveries. After 10 eight-ball overs we had raced to 37/4, and the fact that Arnie Garside (17 off 35 balls) and Daniel Mortlock (22* off 19 balls) even managed to bring us to a vaguely respectable total represented a significant achievement.
Maybe we could content ourselves by saying that 20-over matches aren't Romsey's forte . . . but Australia tried that trick last year before The Ashes and look what happened to them.