And the sun came out in Hurst!

Wargrave under 13's travelled to local side hurst for a berkshire league fixture on Monday evening. After the recent poor weather it was good to get a game in on a very green and slow wicket....

New wargarve captain for the night, charlie Moss won the toss and choose to bowl first. Wargrave fielded a young side for this fixture so needed to get off to a good start, opening bowler woods made sure of that with a wicket 4th ball, bowling one of his fellow county players! however this brought in the Hurst number 3 who was determined to swing the bat at anything off the stumps, on this occassion these tactice worked as he made a quickfire 20 before being bowled by Sulaman, Wargrave rotated the bowlers in the hunt for wickets and we picked up a further wicket to hattey, however the scorboard was moving at a pace as we became a little ragged in the field, Hurst finished on a very creditable 132 for 3 from their 20 overs. The boys kept going to the end and all the bowlers had some excellent spells but anything too short was punished by the more experienced Hurst outfit, the boys must work on bowling accuratly for the whole over not just 4 balls.

Wargrave made some changes to the batting order to ensure all the boys who had not bowled would get an opportunity to bat and new opener for the evening Henry Atkinson went out and smashed the ball about to great effect, very quickly not out retired for an excellent 30, this brought in Euan Woods to the crease and an immediate bowling change by Hurst to bring thier county bowler on, we had a great contest that woods shadded as he also retired for 32 including 2 sixes, however the bowler picked up the wickets of moss and withers as we lost regular wickets in the search for quick runs. We closed our innings on 110 for 6 off 20 overs, this was an excellent batting display against a very good hurst bowling attack, the boys can be proud of thier efforts in this game. Things to work on will be better backing up of throws coming in and to stop the boys constant habit of creeping closer and closer during an over! so far this season 90% of our wickets have been either bowled or LBW, we have only taken 3 catches and indeed not dropped many, this can be contributed to bowlers not always putting enough pressure on the batsmen in an over and also out ability to have the right fielders in the right places. We should and need to take more catches! as the saying goes catches win matches..

So Thanks to BoB Austin for umpire duties, Hurst for being excellent hosts and both sets of boys who played the game in an excellent spirit.