Our Under 15s couldn’t back up their comfortable victory over Royston in the previous round losing by 53 runs to Saffron Walden in the quarter-finals of the Cambridgeshire Cup. We lost the toss on one of our finely prepared new pitches at Reed, stand-in skipper Max Sanderson was powerless to prevent some fine power hitting from Wiseman (56) and Legg (34) despite nearly having the latter caught at slip off his own bowling.
We gave debuts to Cotes, Donnor and Wallace all of whom applied themselves well in front of a large gathering of parents enjoying some proper cricket weather at last!
Sanderson and manager Barlow continued to experiment with various bowlers and were rewarded with some wickets from Cambridge and Wallace
W Green also returned from injury, bowling an encouraging 2-over spell. Strike bowler W Archer bowled with fluency and got the ball to grip and bounce well at times taking the visitors’ Legg’s top of off stump.
Ultimately the visitors score of 169 was going to be a tough ask though despite some shortish boundaries and a fast outfield. Our response was good though regularly going at 5/6 an over.
Sanderson fell just short of a 50 which would of been back to back fifties for him in the competition. Several other batsman got starts and hit a boundary or two but didn’t manage to go on and we finished on 116-7.
Manager Richard Barlow was encouraged by our boys display though there were lots of positives this evening and we can take them in to our league campaign. I’m really noticing a change in attitudes too, our availability is improving and hopefully the boys are starting to feel part of a team. It will be tough at times for those who are Under 14 playing up a year but we will keep including them and evolving as a team.
Match report submitted by Richard Barlow.
