Another autumnal May evening and the U13s made the trip to Duston to play St Crispin’s Ryelands [StCR].
Prashil Chauhan and Lilly Smith came into the team to replace Liam Morrissey and Anya Neal, Lilly making her club debut.
Skipper Jake won the toss again and invited StCR to bat on the over-sized 22 yards pitch. Archie and Prashil opened the bowling as the glow from the electronic scoreboard offered the only source of heat and light around the ground.
The pattern from the previous week began to replay itself; the Cook’s bowlers not finding the right line and length and the StCR batsmen found the boundary with regularity. The full-length pitch was causing the bowlers problems and wickets were required as the score was rattling along at 11 runs an over and 200 was looking a possibility.
Prashil was the man and his ‘Barnes-Wallis’ double-bouncer put paid to one of the openers and Aidan Garratt soon followed it up bowling full and straight to see the other opener caught in the gully by Jake, which began to slow the rate right down.
The Cooks continued to apply pressure in the field, and some excellent stops by Will George, Lilly, Niamh and Prashil started to give the team more confidence, with Mikey again doing well behind the stumps.
The next StCR batsmen were a bit unlucky to come in just as Jake brought himself into the attack and got into his rhythm, bowling quick and straight and saw four of them off in quick succession, all clean bowled. As with last week, the excellent fielding and bowling in the latter part of the innings slowed the opposition down, and meant StCR finished on 118-6 from their 20 overs.
Building on the message from Coach Garratt at practice, and the conservative batting from previous matches, the team needed to get off to a positive start.
George ‘Tavare’ Thompson and Jacob ‘Trotty’ Reeve opened the innings, but the continuing struggles to meet bat with ball were all too apparent, and Extras were again our friend as our total crept up too slowly.
Archie joined George and the pattern continued until Archie was unfortunately run out. Jake hit two boundaries in quick succession to force the score along, but was soon undone by a slower ball and our chances of getting close to the StCR score was receding fast.
The middle order came and went quite quickly, with Mikey and sister Lilly left unbeaten at the end of the innings. Well done Lilly for getting out there and seeing out the end of the innings, with the Cooks finishing on 65-8.
The story of the evening was that within the score of 65-8, 51 were extras, meaning we scored only 14 off the bat, 8 of which came from two shots. If we are to develop, the bowling and fielding is coming on great, but the batting is of real concern and will be the focus of practice this week. I can’t stress enough the need to practice at home to supplement practice and match-play.
Thanks to Charlie for umpiring and Ben for scoring and all of the fantastic support from parents.
The next U13s match is on Monday 15th May, away to Bugbrooke, while the U11s are at home to West Haddon & Guilsborough on Sunday morning, 10am start.