Friday 10th May

The under 11s A team met Hampstead on a perfect evening for cricket. They were also treated to their first grass wicket of the season.

Euan did the honours and lost the toss and the boys padded up to bat first.

Cameron and Euan opened up the innings and kicked us off with a superb drive off the first ball for 4 with what was probably shot of the match.
Unfortunately Euan was out clean bowled as was Robbie.

Jonah joined Cameron in the middle who was now in the wars and unfortunately ended up retiring after a couple of blows.

Jonah plugged away scoring steadily eventually run out (top scoring with 12) as was Ben. Tom Richard hit our second and last boundary of the innings and Sachin chipped in with 10 including a couple of lovely late glances. Alex, Malachy, Oscar and Jonah all tried to push the total along but unfortunately much like the top order struggled to get any rhythm. SO we stuttered to 83 for 7 with 2 retired helped along by good old Extras who high scored with 39. So a net score of 44 and 2 runouts. The Midd were going to need to take early wickets to have any chance of making a game of this one.

The boys took the field with their usual high energy. Hampstead got off to a good start scoring with much more fluency than we were able to muster. Some excellent fielding and pretty tight bowling saw 3 wickets fall in quick succession claimed by Tom, Jonah C and Ben. Jonah J then took an edge which was gobbled up by Cameron behind the stumps and suddenly the opposition was under pressure. Robbie came on in the 11th over and bowled tight and taking our 5th wicket caught by Tom running to his left, well taken catch. Euan bowled tight and claimed our 6th wicket for 61 runs. From there Hampstead got over the line in the 17th over.

Positives:
Great spirit.
Lots of support and energy in the field.
Bowled and fielded well

To work on:
Must make better decisions running between the wickets. 2 run outs.
No fluency with the bat.

Training on Sunday will be focused on Game based practice. We ll use this to prepare for the next game.

Go the Midd!!!