Report by Cam Petrie:
It doesn't bode well when extras end up being top score in a second innings chase, but when wides alone take that honour, things are pretty bleak. Today was supposed to be marked by clouds from 2pm and rain from 5pm, and although we spent most of the afternoon in bright sunshine, we seemed to be cursed with living out the forecast in real life.
It is safe to say that Romsey haven't had an easy time of it this year, and our struggles to have an eleven continued today, requiring Andy to draft in Geoff Hales as "Romsey's oldest debutante", and fish for Rob Palmer and Elliot Peck from the now familiar CCA Additional Players List. The truly frustrating thing about today, was that we started off in glorious fashion. Winning the toss and putting NCI in to bat, Stefan van Eeden (3/27 off 8 overs) had their captain out caught behind by Kshitij Sabnis in the first over, he an Andy (1/16 off 8 overs) then induced a multi-over dot fest before Stefan bowled their other opener, and Andy bowled their number three in the seventh and eighth overs, and then Rob (1/0 off 3 balls!) came on and drew a lofted catch to Richard Rex at mid-off from his second ball - meaning we had NCI by the throat at 16/4 off 9.2 overs. Unfortunately, the next ball saw Rob pull something and leave the field, and Cam Petrie (0/8 off three balls!!) had to step up at no notice and bowl out the over. In principle, this was fine, and Cam drew an outside edge that fell just short of Kshitij, but in the process he knocked the bails off at the bowler's end - making it a dead ball (not a no-ball as in International cricket apparently). He then swung the ball too much and leaked wides, before dropping short to give a boundary, and all of a sudden, the pressure was released. Metaphorical storm clouds were gathering.
Hugh Davies (1/60 off 8 overs) and Elliot Peck (1/31 off 8 overs) were brought on for a necessary double bowling change, and the NCI number 5 - whose feet appeared to be set in concrete - set about missing or nudging anything mildly outside his scoring zone, and belting everything in said zone either across or far over the boundary. This helped NCI to more than double their score by the 14th over, before Elliot drew a sharp catch to Cam at gully, who gained a measure of redemption by taking a nerveless low catch, so we had them 41/5. By drinks they had surged to 86, and our only real chance of a wicket was a massive arcing mow that was spilled by Cam on the cow boundary. Stefan was able to draw an edge to Kshitij off the lead footed slugger in the first over after drinks, leaving NIC at 90/6, with nineteen overs to go. You might have thought that we could have quickly cleaned up the "tail" and headed to an early tea, instead we saw a 104-run partnership off the next 16 overs, as the doughty and chanceless veteran seventh wicket partnership peerlessly rotated the strike, plundered boundaries, and gradually pushed us six feet under. We were clearly struggling with the lack of a regular fifth bowler (Debasish Das didn't have the most auspicious of Romsey debuts, and Richard's grenades were "defused" so to speak), and it was only in the 37th over that Hugh was able to get a breakthrough, with a lovely dipping yorker. The scoring slowed, but continued to tick along, and NCI made it to an imposing 218/7 off their full complement of overs.
The Petrie/Jackson lunch was nervously munched by a Romsey side aware that a 200+ score is a do-able but tough task, and we didn't have a lot of batting lined up. Would our innings bring metaphorical "rain" or "sunshine"? Truth of the matter is that the real sun was now blazing, but the likely course of our chase was signalled almost immediately as Cam (0 off 3 balls) carefully glided a wide-ish one with soft-hands straight into the lap of the gully fielder in the first over. This saw Kshitij join Richard Rex (10 off 49 balls), and the generally tight bowling and nervousness about our batting depth induced a Romsey dot-fest par excellence, which took us to the tenth over and our score to a worrying 18/1, with 1/3 of those runs coming from wides. Kshitij eventually hit some boundaries to ease the pressure we were putting on ourselves, but then played over a yorker, and we were 18/2. The dot-fest was resumed with Arnie Garside (1 off 25 balls) and Richard remaining solid and stolid, but largely failing to get the ball off the square. Richard eventually started to loosen his shoulders and struck two boundaries, but soon he and Arnie were both caught, and despite hitting a boundary, Elliot (4 off 7 balls) was bowled, so at the drinks break we were pretty much smeared at 39/5, after wickets in the 18th, 19th and 20th overs.
Although we had had NCI at 41/5, we didn't have their luck (or skill), as we lost a pair of wickets in the 22nd and 23rd, and then two in the 26th over, enhancing the smearage to 54/9. The only batsman to show any proper fight was Stefan (12 off 9 balls), who smoked two great boundaries and was then caught by the catch of the day going for a third. After the ninth wicket, our only remaining runs came from byes and wides before we oozed our way to 59 runs before Geoff Hales was bowled and Andy was left 0* off 18 balls.
Bowling first in each of our matches this season, we have shown glimpses of greatness, but have also ended up leaking too many runs after setting up a solid base. The true nature of our woe, however, lies in the fact that we haven't yet batted out our overs and have only had one partnership of more than 27 runs - and that was the first one in the first game where we actually had a bat - against Linton. Despite remaining at the bottom of the table, we are not too far adrift, and a win (or perish the thought TWO wins) will do our confidence and table placement no end of good.