Not Enough Runs

Wargrave took the short trip down the A4 for their second game in two days at Reading CC in this berkshire league fixture.

On a far gloomier and cold day than the previous nights fixture wargrave won the toss and batted first against a strong Reading side. Wargrave openers Withers and Woods proceeded to push the score along until the departure of withers for 5, this brough new boy Hashim Sulaman to partner woods who began to up the scoring rate, we had reached 30 when woods was run out by a direct hit to the stumps for 18 runs. Charlie Moss came in to partner Suliman and they progressed the score on with Suliman showing great maturity with his running and calling for runs and leaving the big shot to the more aggressive Moss, the pair fell in quick succession with suliman first to depart to an excellent catch at backward square leg and then moss for an excellent 28 runs with 4 boundaries. With overs running out and batsman going for quick runs a succesion of wickets fell cheaply to leave wargrave on a below par 83 for 8 wickets after 20 overs, this should have been in the region of 100 after the start and middle overs and would prove to be cruical

The Reading innings started with the evening getting darker and rain beginning to fall and with captain woods opening the bowling we had a breakthrough 3rd ball as woods bowled the opener and followed this up in his next over with batsmen number 2, also bowled. However this brought together Readings best two players who put away any loose delivery for a boundary, the score rattled on to over 50 after 9 overs when their county under 12 player retired with 31, bringing it up with a six, this brought a reducton in the run rate and the bowelers were rotated and included excellent debut spells for colbourne and Sulaman, the latter who bowled straight and full and was rewarded with 3 wickets for only 10 runs one of which an excellent catch at gully by Oliie Withers.

However the ask was too much and we could not produce the heroic finish of the previous day against cookham and Reading reached the target of 84 runs in the 17th over winning by 4 wickets. Once again some excellent contributions and good disciplined fielding, however its highlighted the need to score more runs and push on in the final 5 overs whilst batting.

Many thanks to Phil Norris for Umpiring and Bernie Leigh for scoring the game, that was once again played in an excellent spirit, let see how the boys bounce back in our next fixture away against Windsor in the julian cup on friday 25th may.