Andy, over farewell beers with Ev in Mickey Flynn's on the Friday night, got a text message saying that today's game against Cottenham had been called off, some 20 hours ahead of time. Which was a bit of a surprise -- it had certainly been a grey week, and rain was predicted for today, but if the forecast had been wrong then it's hard to imagine that many other matches would have been cancelled. And even though Saturday dawned sunny, things went downhill from there, so the early cancellation actually saved us a wasted trip up north. In terms of our continuing battle against relegation it means we're still just out of the bottom two, 0.67 points ahead of Comberton, and below Coton and Over by an even smaller margin.
These late-season wash-outs have also had a bearing on our individual awards, as contenders for both the batting and bowling are yet to qualify for full averages. On the batting front Daniel Mortlock (75 runs at 37.50) needs to bat once more to have played six innings, although it would be a pretty sad state of affairs if he won the batting award with less than 100 runs for the year. Which is all very principled, but it turns out only three Romsey batsmen have made it into triple figures this season, and of those only perennial winner Andy Owen (158 runs at 26.33) is averaging more than 17.00. Conversely, the low total involved means that just about anyone could bring themselves into contention with a big score in our final two games, so there's maybe a bit of extra incentive to dominate Longstowe's attack in a fortnight. If anyone manages it then we'll just have to keep bowling like we have been, given that four players have taken at least 9 wickets at less than 18.00. And yet Paul Jordan, with 9 wickets at 11.33, has only bowled 27 overs, and so needs to send down 78 deiveries in our final two matches to qualify for the bowling award. Failing that, it's a three-way race between Russell Woolf (15 wickets at 14.67), Marcelino Gopal (14 wickets at 17.21) and Daniel Mortlock (9 wickets at 17.56). All of which merely suggests that history will repeat -- two more wash-outs would see Andy and Russ retain their titles from 2007.