A beautiful evening on the meadows saw a youthful Philanderers midweek XI, led by Rob Gill, take on Grantchester. Rob lost the toss and we were forced to field in the early evening heat. Burnett and Holmes shared the new rock and made very good use of it - with the first wicket to fall in the 2nd over to the bowling of Burnett. This bought a fresh faced young batsman out at three who proceeded to play very correctly, falling in behind anything straight from Holmes and having a go at anything wide… unfortunately for all parties nothing he had a go at did he hit, and he was eventually run out by his partner (reasonable credit to a good Carew throw from the boundary) for a quite astonishingly antisocial 1 from 31 balls. Some captains may have decided to feed Grantchester some runs at this point, but not Gill, he hauled off Dean after two trademark expensive overs of rubbish, and brought serious cricketer McLellan on to restrict the score further. McLellan finished with 2/19 and Grantchester reached a paltry 109 for 6 wickets from their allotted 20 overs.
Cassels opened up and decided to make short work of the target, hitting five fours in the first over, with a mix of glorious drives and inside edges - in the bowler’s defence, and is own words, he was really more of a 35 over bowler and not suited to the twenty20 stuff. Cassels proceeded to 48 from less than 20 balls, including two consecutive enormous straight sixes, whilst Carew reached 45 not out when the target was reached. The Philanderers finished three down, Gill and Rogers joining Cassels back in the “sheds”, to give a comfortable 7 wicket victory. We retired to the battle cruiser where Grantchester explained their poor performance by saying they had “selected a team to match the Philanderers sides they have played recently” obviously forgetting the thumping we gave them at Clavering recently in which they had been 12-6 at one stage.
George Dean
