Report by Daniel Mortlock:
The pre-match signs for this game verged on the dismal: aside from the weather forecast, which has us all desperately focussing on the couple of hours in the afternoon when the rain probability was "only" 30%, there were also mass confusion in the WhatsApp group about basic information such as when and even where the game would be. The star here was returning tour legend Will Taunton-Burnett (listed on the team sheet as "Wilty Tree", an affliction most of are likely to experience at some point). Captaining today in his first FAS game since 2014, Wilty up until late morning he'd thought we were playing in Blockley, so it was presumably only by channelling Lewis Hamilton (who won his ninth British Grand Prix at Silverstone today) that he was able to make it to Bibury in time for the planned 1:30pm start.
Having chosen to field, we started off with the tried and trusted opening combination of Joe White and Daniel Mortlock, confident that they could at least be relied on not to serve up a buffet of half-trackers. But by the third over of the game both had been taken off: Joe (1/2) had started with a maiden; Daniel (an eventual 3/20) had then, thanks to a fantastic diving catch by James Wyatt, been gifted his 100th FAS wicket, following up with the plumbest of LBWs next ball; and then Joe bowled the surviving opener, leaving Bibury - and the game - in trouble at 0/3.
Wilty quickly pivoted from experience to innocence, bringing on Tom Dare and his school friend Alex Clayton (on FAS debut). Both bowled well, with identical figures of 0/19 from their four-over spells, although Tom could feel a little hard done-by, in terms of both runs conceded, four coming after Alex had let the ball go between his legs, and wickets taken, as he'd bowled the Bibury number four, E. Robinson, with a Dambusters-style delivery which bounced a second time but inside the crease. In part because of the second bound, but mainly because this would have reduced Bibury to 2/4, Wilty withrew our appeal - much to Tommy's chagrin. For most of the innings this seemed to have been the right call, as wickets fell steadily: James Wyatt (1/2) and Wilty (1/11) took their first tour wickets in a few years; and then James Houlder (3/14) took three wickets in an over. After a (second) good catch by Predicta and a sharp stumping by Nigel Reynolds, James found himself on a hat-trick with a 13-year-old girl, Izzy Cowell, coming out to bat. She seemed pretty skeptical about Nigel's suggestion that she smash the hat-trick ball for four . . . but managed it nonetheless, essaying a proper cover drive which was the clear shot of the day.
At this point Bibury were 66/7 and it seemed we'd gone through the "can do no wrong" looking glass to the point that we were doing too well, in that our efforts to make a game of it hadn't worked. Robinson, who by now had his eye in, hit a few morale-boosting boundaries, and the total had almost doubled by the time the ninth wicket fell, which should have been the end of the innings as Bibury only had ten players. But here Wilty's largesse possibly went a bit too far, as he allowed one of their openers, J. Cowell, to have a second bat. The result was a blow-out as Robinson (83* off 78 balls) and Cowell (23* off 17 balls) thumped 24 off the last two overs, taking Bibury to a worryingly imposing total of 158/9 from their 30 overs.
The nominal plot of our second innings, our pursuit of Bibury's total, was in danger of being overshadowed by a subplot: the Harry Houlder testimonial floorshow. We'd started the game with a brief round of applause to mark Harry's hundredth FAS game, after which he, rather unusually, declined an offer to bowl - rumour has it because there weren't enough wickets left for him to be able to extend his ongoing streak of consecutive 3-fors. He did not, however, decline the chance of opening the batting, and so had an excellent opportunity to score the 48 runs he needed to get to 1000 FAS runs. Through a combination of disciplined batting and, er, less-disciplined inside edges, Harry made steady progress and a scoring add-up in the 23rd over revealed he was on 47, at which point our accounting systems broke down catastrophically:
Now batting in relative silence, Harry accelerated to finish with his highest ever FAS score, of 67* off 82 balls. This meant he'd done his fair share of the chase, scoring 42% of the target from 45% of the innings . . .
. . . indicating that additional input would be needed for a FAS win. After a good early contribution was from Toby Reynolds (28 off 21 balls), Alex Clayton (15 off 41 balls) struggled to rotate the strike to the degree that Bibury had edged into favouritism at the 25-over mark: we were just 118/3, meaning we needed 41 runs from the remaining 30 balls. Fortunately, Bibury made a fatal mistake at this point: they took a wicket, which brought in James Houlder, still stinging following Izzy's treatment of his bowling earlier in the day. Our shot-making and running suddenly got a vital injection of energy, and James and Harry got us back ahead of the game, and we started the final over with just 7 needed. One bad ball would surely be enough . . . and so it turned out, as James (19* off 12 balls) received a hip-high full toss that was bad enough for the bowler to shout out "Shit - sorry bat!" even as the ball was speeding across the leg-side boundary.
With the sun now shining we hung around for the traditional BiBuryQ, during which an innocent enquiry about their choice of cap colour - a peircingly bright yellow - revealed a story so astonishing that it required independent fact-checking. Back in 2017 a local resident, retired dentist Peter Maddox, made the pretty unremarkable decision to park his car outside his house; but the car was a (fiery) yellow Vauxhall Corssa and the house is on the famous Arlington Row. Some tourists were annoyed by this inadvertent photo-bombing, one going as far as to scratch the "MOVE" into the car's bonnet, damage that Peter couldn't afford to repair. At this point the village swung into action, raising money for him and then, on April Fool's Day 2017, holding a yellow car rally through the town. This got enough publicity that Vauxhall officially named the colour Maddox Yellow, which is hence also the colour of the cricket team's gear. FAS is, of course, not unacquainted with garish gear, although given that our blazers pre-date our first visit to Bibury in 2015 it was mildly annoying that one of their supporters repeatedly tried to claim that our sartorial taste failure was inspired by theirs.