With the unfounded optimism of England’s Euro 2016 match against Iceland setting the backdrop, the early start caused a few logistical problems and Cogenhoe offered to bat first to secure an early finish. As it turned out, we wish we hadn’t bothered rushing to watch the football!
Regular openers Sam Tipler and Alfie Wreford got us off to a conservative but solid start of 16 runs from 4 overs until Sam played across the line to a straight one and was out LBW. Alex Bushell didn’t seem as comfortable as he had in previous weeks and was out soon after, clean bowled for a duck, blaming the slope [sorry mate, we can’t do a lot about that!].
Once again we had a few difficulties either scoring or hanging around in the middle order, as Jake Morrissey 8no from 28 balls struggled to find the gaps and a succession of batsmen fell James Bushell [0], Liam Morrissey [0], Aidan Garratt [1], Nicky Hindson [2], Spencer Smith [3] and Jacob Reeve on his debut scored his first U13 run [1no].
This saw us reach a very modest 48-8 from 16 overs, against a less than threatening ONs attack which contributed 15 extras to the score.
With opening bowling tandem of Keelan Hone and Jake back in tandem, early wickets were a must to have any chance of a victory, but disaster struck with the first delivery from Jake when wicket-keeper Spencer Smith took it on the thumb and had to leave the field, with skipper Alfie taking over the gloves.
Even with a regular rotation of the bowlers, the opening batsmen punished any bad balls and saw ONs through to a comfortable 10 wicket victory with 3.3 overs to spare.
It was a strange game as fundamentally the boys did nothing wrong and the opposition were not world-beaters, we are just finding it a struggle to score runs consistently. Plenty to work on with one fixture remaining, even if it falls into winter nets!
Thanks to Chassy B for umpiring and Ben for scoring as usual.
There will be no practice on 1st and 8th July and the next and last fixture is Monday 11th July at Overstone.
