Saturday, August 8, 2009, was magnificient, perfect for some lazy village cricket and a cooling pint. Unfortunately Thursday, August 6, 2009, was horrid, with Cambridgeshire was soaked by torrential rain for most of the day, leaving most of the county's cricket grounds water-logged at best. From there it was simply a question of whether the grounds would dry in time for Saturday's matches. In most cases they did, 72 of the 77 scheduled CCA league games being played. Unfortunately the Needingworth pitch was one of the few that was still too wet to prepare on the Saturday morning, and so twenty-two frustrated cricketers had to find something else to do on what, in Cambridge at least, was one of the most glorious days of the summer.
One option for the afternoon was to potter around on the CCA web-site to see how the league ladder has been evolving in our absence. The basic answer is "quite a lot", as all the other teams in the top half have played at least once since we last took to the field. Second-placed Weston Colville II had a nightmare against Cambridge Granta V a week ago, conceding 81 extras (53 of which were wides) on their way to a 9 run loss, but then normal service was resumed when they thrashed Elsworth by 101 runs today. As a result of the loss their league average has dropped to 17.27 (as compared to our 18.70) and we're effectively a game ahead of them. If Weston Colville win their three remaining games they'll go up to 17.86; if we win two of our last three and get 6 bonus points in the (hopefully hypothetical) loss then we'll squeeze past them with an average of 17.92. Third-placed Dullingham have also been in action, and didn't do much better than Colville last week, being bowled out for 84 by Needingworth, who won by 6 wickets. But Dullingham also came back today, beating fourth-placed Cambourne by just 4 runs. Dullingham's league average is now 14.18, some 4.52 below us, and even if they win their three remaining games their average will only go as high as 15.43; and even if we lose all three of our remaining games (but get 5 bonus points each time) we'll have a league average of 15.54. So, unless we get completely thrashed in our final three games, we should be back up in Junior 3 next year. However the real aim surely has to be to win the league, which we should manage if we win at least two of our last three games.