Beaconsfield U11B v Bledlow Ridge Div 3 – Tuesday 24th May 2016

Beaconsfield U11B v Bledlow Ridge

Div 3 – Tuesday 24th May 2016

Played away at Bledlow Ridge

On a lovely sunny evening, albeit with a rather chilly wind as the sun set the boys took on a very good Bledlow Ridge team.

Beaconsfield batted first after Freddie C won the toss. Within the Beaconsfield team we had a number of debutants, “first caps” going to Mohit and Freddie Fyfe from year 4.

Jasper and Fred opened the batting, facing an opening bowler in the county setup. They applied themselves very well and moved the score along carefully to 213 after their 4 overs. Oscar and Ben then came in, again facing some accurate bowling. They too moved the score along with a particularly lovely 4 from Oscar to 233 after 8 overs. The Bledlow Ridge team were a really good fielding team, they positioned themselves well and were quick to the ball, so the fact that we had no run outs (yet) was great and showed the boys calling had got much better. (still work to do though as we probably left some runs out there being a bit too careful!)

I had paired up Lui and Max ot bat together for the first time ever – hoping that some twins telepathy would push them to new heights. The batted well, moving the calling of runs to a more aggressive approach, which resulted in a run out but lots of singles and left us at 236 after 12 overs.

We then had captain Freddie plus debutant Freddie to the wicket. Freddie C playing some strong pull and sweep shots moved the score along, whilst Freddie F frustrated the bowlers by nudging all their straight balls for singles. After their 4 overs we were 242 after 16 and in came our last pair.

Mohit’s first batting performance, his partner Jasper (again) as unfortunately we had some confusion with match dates and therefore were one player short. Despite a couple of wickets going down the score once again moved forwards and we ended our 20 overs on 245 which against a strong team was an excellent performance.

After squash and biscuits kindly provided by Bledlow Ridge we took the field with Freddie and Lui opening the bowling against their strongest batting pair. Their power hitting managed to move them along to 223 after the 1st 4 overs. Already I could hear rumours amongst our boys that they would “overtake us soon” and we started to panic a bit. One of our challenges this year is to build more resilience as a team, not to shout at each other, but for each of us to do our job to the best of our ability. Mohit and Max took over the bowling with Mohit showing real promise after a slightly nervous start. Jasper was doing a great job of wicket keeping (which is never easy with some of the random balls that are sent down!). But after 8 overs they were almost upon us – 239 vs our 245 with 12 overs still to bat.

One of the lovely things about the Barrington’s format is every wicket we get they lose 6 runs, so we were still in it if we could take wickets, up until the 11th over we hadn’t done, but then Fred and then Freddie Fyfe, in consecutive overs bowled the batsman, meaning
that we were in with a shout. After 12 overs they were 248, 3 runs ahead.

Max, Ben and Oscar bowled through to the last over. I thought we were very unlucky not to pick up more wickets in these 6 overs but Bledlow Ridge played very carefully and protected their lead and blocked every straight ball we bowled. Oscar did manage to sneek one out in the 19th over by which time the score was 263. Freddie C needed a huge last over with 3 wickets to bring us back into it. Despite turning the ball well the batsmen played out the last over for what I thought was a well deserved win by Bledlow Ridge, but a solid performance by us with 9 players in the field, our younger U8 and U9 bowling 6 of our overs, and Mohit making his debut.

Result – Bledlow Ridge 273 for 3, Beaconsfield 245 for 5

Many thanks to Michele for scoring and Andy for helping get the boys ready for batting etc.

Roll on the return match!