BCC U8's vs Knotty Green Cricket Club

The match was played in brilliant sunshine at Knotty Green’s Cricket Ground with play starting at 10:00am; Knotty Green having elected to bat first. Beaconsfield seemed to take their time getting into the match with KGCC trundling along nicely to a real world cricket score of 34 without loss and a Barrington’s adjusted score of 234 – 200 being the net run start point for each side.

Ewan Honeyben began to tighten the game up with a maiden over and was followed in the next over by Kingsley Thompson who took three wickets for no runs in a wicket maiden which meant that under Barrington rules KGCC lost 18 of their preciously accumulated 34 run in just 3 balls.

The Thompson- Honeyben spell having gone for just 8 runs scored against 3 wickets taken it was then the turn of Raphael Ul-Ghani to take another 3 wickets – ably supported by Miles Hodges down the other end who produced the first clean bowled ball of the innings for his wicket. This spell ended with figures of 4 wickets for 8 runs. What the figures for these 8 overs don’t spell out are the fact that many of these wickets were as a result of run outs. Great fielding boys!

One more wicket and some pretty decent “death bowling” by Archie Lee and Deelan Vala meant that they only managed to add 19 runs to their total in the final 4 overs despite some lusty hitting. All in all our performance in the field was a credit to the entire team.

After a tea break that was more of an ice cream break the two Toms, Braganza and Easterbrook, got BCC 9 of the 27 runs we needed to draw in the first four overs taking the score to 209, despite having lost an early wicket.

Rafi and Miles lost a wicket each but had moved us onto a net position of 214 before Max Hall and Krish Bhargava headed to the crease and continued to steadily add to the score – adding a further 6 runs to the net rate.

Max deserves special mention for some very loud and firm calling; and indeed the whole team’s calling and running between the wickets was very good.

So with 220 on the board – 8 short of victory, Ewan and Kingsley headed to the crease. In a blistering display of heavy hitting Ewan pummelled three fours and a single for an excellent 13 runs whilst Kingsley was forced to watch as a series of wides went by his bat but onto the board.

By the time Deelan and Archie headed out to the crease for the last 4 overs BCC had 245 on the board and were largely home and hosed. Deelan added a further 11 runs including a truly sublime hook for 4 runs as part of a partnership that meant BCC ended on 262 runs – some 35 runs ahead of KGCC.

It is fair to say that this was the ultimate in a team victory, everyone played a strong role. Great calling, great bowling and batting - now we just need to work on our catching, positional play once the ball has been hit (or missed as the case may be) and not standing so close to our wicket we occasionally hit it – and we’ll be ready for the return leg at home.

All of the boys should be proud of how well they played and the spirit with which they played the game.