Goodwood, June 22nd, 2023
It wasn’t quite the expected Goodwood. The lordly cedars were there, the intensely manicured outfield, the electronic scoreboard-cum-shepherd’s-hut-thing, the succulent, local, organic, rare-breed burgers afterwards. On this visit, however, a crop of white tents had mushroomed all around the ground. Goodwood was getting ready for the Festival of Speed.
There was a certain amount of speed in Goodwood’s opening attack. And accuracy. G and the Bard, opened with more dot balls than they’d have liked. Mike F (26 not out), Paddy (28 not out) and Rishi (25 not out) started putting the runs on, however, comfortably reaching their limits and leaving Mike C (17 not out) with little to do, other than hitting a perfect cover drive to the boundary. We ran out of overs on 122 for 2.
It was a decent target but looked, at first, all too reachable. Goodwood’s top order was strong and knocked their way rapidly, with a fair few boundaries, towards the halfway mark. After their departure, though, some focused bowling slowed the run rate, and as we closed in on the final few overs, The Racqueteers scented a possible victory. Prav and Rishi in particular had a good day in the field, Prav finishing with figures of 16 runs off his four overs, and having taken three excellent catches (two off Head of Salmon, one off the President – including an astounding low, one-handed dive to his right). Rishi finished on 1 for 21, having also distinguished himself in the field: he returned one fast and flat from deep midwicket to scatter the wickets and run out their number ten. For wickets, though, the President and Head of Salmon had the most success, both taking two – the President for just 14 runs off his four overs.
A couple of skilful overs from the Skipper kept Goodwood battened down, and in the end, they ran out of time and out of runs, finishing nine short of our total. A characterful victory at an equally characterful ground.
Result: Racqueteers win by 9 runs
The Racqueteers Cricket Club 