As the colts season draws to an end the U16 A’s are finishing the season with a flourish.
Last Thursday evening (11th July) Bidborough U16 A’s hosted Sevenoaks Vine on a sun baked Bidborough wicket & outfield. With the bitter taste of the last over defeat to Sevenoaks Vine in the first game of the season is fresh in the mangers mouth, Bidborough won the toss & the skipper (Archie) for the evening made the correct decision to bat first.
Archie & Ed Gray opened the innings & soon found that the true hard & fast wicket was ideal for stoke play & the fast outfield meant that good strokes were rewarded with boundaries. Archie batted particularly well & found the wonderful batting track to his liking hitting 7x 4’s & 1x 6 to finally be rewarded with a 50. Eddie continued to bat well & never looked in trouble & was run out for 28 trying to pinch a cheeky single & was only undone by a direct hit. Wilko was then joined at the crease by Lawrence ‘slugger’ Mayne who added a quick fire 27 in less than 3 overs to really put 7oaks under pressure. However to 7oaks credit they stuck at their task & the last 2 overs of the innings saw the loss of 4 wickets for only 4 runs. Wilko again batting sensibly making a well-constructed 19.
Bidborough finished their allotted 22 overs 6 for 153 – probably about 20 runs short of where they perhaps should have been after the start that Archie & Eddie gave the team.
7oaks started their innings cautiously & after 3 overs were 1-12 with Archie bowling the opener, however this brought to the crease the next batsman who along with the remaining opener showed their positive intent with some clean hitting but in the 9th over Eddie Gray got the breakthrough with Wilko taking a good catch but the score had moved to 2 -73. However the wicket did not halt 7oaks progress as they continued relatively untroubled until Dan pulled off a brilliant caught & bowled from a ball smashed back at him which had the ‘fat umpire ducking for cover’ (Me). With this wicket Bidborough had managed to wrestle the ascendancy back in their favour & with Eddie gaining revenge from his earlier run out with run out of his own 7 oaks found themselves needing 34 off the last 5 overs (6.5 and over) But some great bowling from Ed Mayne, Wilko & Keven Brown backed up by quality fielding proved too much for 7oaks & at the end of their innings finished on 8- 146. Bidborough Win!
A special mention to Elliot who took on the task of wicket keeping & performed above my high expectations- well done buddy! All the bowlers bowled well under pressure:
Archie: 4 overs 1-23 | Lawrence: 4 overs 0-23 | Eddie 2 overs 1-30 | Dan: 4 overs 1-17 | Edmund 4 overs 1-30 | Wilko 2 overs 0-7
Impressively there were only 9 extras (3 x NB’s & 3 x wides) this makes a huge difference. A performance that showed the boys all the benefits that quality bowling backed up with good intelligent fielding ultimately brings. A great game between 2 well matched teams & all the boys can be rightfully proud of their achievements on this night.