After last week’s defeat to St Crispin’s, the boys headed to Bugbrooke to play a similar sized club to ourselves with optimism reasonably high for a win. Unavailable Anya Neal and Ollie Woolley were replaced by James Bushell on his club debut and Jake Morrissey.
Having won the toss, Alfie Wreford invited the Badgers to bat on the artificial wicket and opening bowlers Keelan Hone and George Thompson restricted the scoring well with the help of good fielding from all the boys. Having made ‘backing up’ the theme of the previous Friday’s practice, it was good to see everyone concentrating and putting it into practice.
The Bugbrooke team were batting correctly but not making in-roads into the scorebook and with some good bowling and fielding contributions across the board, restricted Bugbrooke to a modest 65-4 from their 20 overs.
Special mention to Spencer Smith who took on the wicket-keeping duties for the first time and he really enjoyed the challenge.
The wickets were shared between James Bushell [2-1], Jake Morrissey [1-3] and Liam Morrissey [1-1] with all of the bowlers producing some fantastic deliveries. The thing to work on next is to reduce the number of wides [19 and no balls [2] within the opposition’s score and that is what we’ll focus on next week at training.
Sam Tipler and Mackenzie Eldershaw opened the innings positively and took the score to 12 when a fantastic throw saw Mack run out for 2. Skipper Alfie joined Sam and were looking comfortable until Alfie top edged one to gully who took a good catch and we were suddenly 19-2 but with plenty of batting to come.
Last week’s batting hero Alex Bushell joined Sam and saw us home with Sam retiring on an excellent 30no from 44 balls and Alex 18no from 18 balls as the Cooks recorded a comprehensive 8 wicket win. It was good to see Sam move up from the U11s into the U13s and score heavily.
Although tougher opposition await us over the coming weeks, we enjoyed the victory and look forward to practice on Friday.
Thanks to Charlie for umpiring and Ben for scoring using his new iPad app!
See you all at home next Monday for the local derby against Horton House.