Against All Odds, Salix Remember How to Win

This week, away at The Recreation Ground to face Jordans Taverners, the Salix eleven (minus one) turned up and played what can only be described, with some suspicion, as actual cricket. Salix won by 8 wickets. Nobody quite believed it either.

Jordans Taverners won the toss, which was carried out by our stand-in captain for the toss, Raj, thanks to some dodgy traffic keeping the day's actual captain, Sai, delayed. They batted and set about building something respectable on a decent surface. T Whittington top-scored with an unbeaten 73, the sort of stubborn, unhurried innings that anchors a total and for a while it looked like Salix might again be chasing something silly. They weren't, in the end, and it was thanks to Sai's new recruits who made Salix a formidable bowling unit. Hardik opened up from one end and did the honest, unglamorous job openers are meant to do — five tidy overs of nagging line and length, rewarded with 2 wickets. At the other end, Hasaan switched between pace and spin, bamboozling fielders, umpires and batters alike as to what he was actually supposed to be bowling. Early wickets went down inside the first few overs, and Jordans never quite recovered the platform.

Adam Darling then did what Adam Darling apparently doesn't do often enough, finishing with the pick of the bowling: 3 for 14 off 5.5 tidy overs, bowling throughout like a man twenty years younger. Sai Balasubramanian chipped in with 2 for 15. Your correspondent, bowling steadily rather than menacingly, picked up the solitary wicket of O Myers, cleaned up rather than caught.

The pick of the fielding, though — and this needs to be said slowly, because it will not be believed — belonged to Raj. Raj, as we have come to know, fields the way a man walks across ice he doesn't trust: slowly, apologetically, and rarely in a straight line. On Sunday, with Noakes well set and the total ticking past 140, Raj found something from somewhere, closed down the ball at a sprint nobody present had seen from him before and sent in a throw straight and true enough to have the stumps shattered and Noakes run out. Whether this was a rare alignment of the stars or evidence that Raj was sober, the club may never know. Either way, it may be a year before he does it again, so those present should consider themselves lucky witnesses. Jordans folded shortly after for 143, Hungin the last man out, bowled by Darling.

Behind the stumps all afternoon, Fezaan did something else Salix has not seen much of this season: he actually kept the ball out. Standing up, standing back, it made no difference — Fezaan collected pretty much everything sent his way, and the extras column, a miserly 9, with just 3 byes in it, tells its own story of competence.

Chasing 144, Salix's reply started with Raj at the top of the order getting some quick runs in the bank: 32 off 32 balls, six boundaries, before holing out to Hunter, caught and bowled off his own bowling. CK fell early, by his own usually high standards, edging behind for just 1 and at that point the game briefly threatened to turn interesting again.

It didn't, because Fezaan and Hasaan decided enough was enough. The brothers came together and simply finished the job without any further fuss: Fezaan, having spent the day catching everything behind the stumps, calmly built an unbeaten 69 off 59 balls with ten fours and a six, while Hasaan, presumably feeling that bowling and wicketkeeping should not have all the fun, cracked an unbeaten 31 off just 17 balls at the other end, five fours and a six included, for a strike rate the wrong side of 180. Between them they saw Salix home in 19.1 overs, an 8-wicket win with more than twenty overs unused — brothers finishing what the bowlers and one astonishing piece of fielding had started.

It was, all told, the sort of Sunday Salix cricket rarely delivers: crisp bowling, competent glovework, a top-order collapse that belonged to the other team for once, and a finish so calm it barely needed the tail. Raj's name will be mentioned in the group chat for weeks, mostly by people asking him to do it again and mostly being told, politely, to f*** off. With next Sunday the final game of the season for Salix, let's hope the momentum keeps going.