After the heroics of the previous Thursday evening: Sunday morning saw the U16’s A team travel to the ‘Neville’ the beautiful home of Tunbridge Wells CC & were privileged to play on the County Ground.
With the massive membership & facilities that a massive town club like T/Wells have available, the expectations were that little Bidborough would be pushed aside with ease. After all the T/Wells players are being groomed for Kent Premier Senior Cricket in the next few years.
Bidborough’s Archie & Chris Mingard were sent in to bat on what looked like a wicket fit for a county ground but the openers found out very early that the pitch did not live up to its appearance & Chris couldn’t adjust to the slow low bounce & chopped on to his stumps, Eddie Gray followed soon after in the same manner. Archie hit a couple of lovely 4’s before playing a loose shot & giving a catch down leg side to the keeper standing up.
Things were not looking good, perhaps T/Wells would steam roll our boys. We needed to re-build the innings – The Skipper stepped up to meet the challenge & stood solid at one end & was ably assisted by Dan. Peter & Dan batted very sensibly despite Dan running between the wickets with what appeared to be an anchor trailing behind him or was it that his shoe laces tied together?
Fortunately Peter & Dan guided us thru some good quick bowling. Dan was dismissed in the 19th over for a determined 24. Edmund & Peter batted thru to the end over the innings to ensure that the score passed 100 finally finishing with 106. Peter showed guts & maturity to finish unbeaten on 33 with Edmund contributing 8 but the partnership of 22 with Peter was important.
Defending 106 was going to be difficult but we had shown in the previous match against 7oaks that we could bowl & field like demons.
Archie started the ball rolling with his first delivery knocking back the leg stump of the T/Wells opener & skipper. But T/Wells have some quality players & were soon dictating matters with some good running supplemented by some boundaries. But as he had done on Thursday evening Dan took a sharp caught & bowled catch to remove the T/Wells gun player. The pressure was on remaining batsman to maintain the scoring against some good steady bowling. The pressure told 3 overs later with Eddie Gray tempting a lofted drive to the reliable Keven Brown who snaffled the catch. Then dot ball followed dot ball & the bowlers continued to grow in confidence, the fielders led by Miggle were determined not to let anything past them.
Peter made all the right calls as captain & eventually Bidborough ran out worthy winners in another tight match with T/Wells finishing 6 down for 95.
The bowlers were backed up some solid fielding. Archie 4 overs 1-21 | Lawrence 4 overs 0-16 | Dan 3 overs 1-16 | Chris 4 overs 0-25 | Ed Gray 4 overs 2-9 | Keven 3 overs 1-7
Another top performance from the entire team but a special mention to skipper Peter who not only managed to carry the team to a defendable 106 but kept brilliantly (when he eventually found his keeping gloves) on a difficult surface. All this while marshalling his troops to victory!!!
Well done lads, the win puts us up to 3rd in the league 1 point behind Sevenoaks Vine (with some un-declared results) oh how I wish we could replay that 1st league game. One game to go for the A team against Horsmonden next Saturday and I would dearly love to finish the season with another win.