Banbury 4th’s hosted Division 8 leaders Dinton at home on Saturday, in what was a must win match for Banbury to progress further up the table.
Dinton won the toss and had no hesitation in putting Banbury in on a wicket with a bit of moisture in it. Runs were very hard to come by for Banbury due to some tight bowling from the Dinton bowlers. after 25 overs, Banbury had moved to 76-3, with Ian Thomas (I didn’t hit it Mitch!) out for 13, Adam Wirth out for a patient 26 and Anas Ahmed for 21. Richard Lambden and Andy Jones steadied things with a 55 run partnership, which boosted the run rate somewhat, but after getting starts Andy was out for 23 and Richard for 35. Some late hitting from Tom White (26 not out) and some handy extras from the bowlers (47 extras in total by the way!) enabled Banbury to score 48 runs off the last 5 overs to finish 197-5.
This score was probably 20 runs short and so was going to be hard to defend. This became even harder after a few overs when James Morgan had to leave the field due to be stung by a wasp. After some tight bowling from Clark Berry and Mark Wright, Mark Ludlow and Tyrone Burrows started to look quite dangerous, with Ludlow taking 17 off Mark Pallett’s first over. However, Anas Ahmed made the key breakthroughs for Banbury, dismissing Ludlow and Burrows for 27 and 30 respectively. John Kook and George Tomlin from Dinton then started a good partnership, which kept scoring at around 5 runs an over and had moved Dinton to 136 for 5 off 33 overs.
Then it all changed, with Adam Wirth brought into bowl with Dinton needing 62 runs off 2 overs to win, the different angle for the batsmen to content with proved vital. Adam had John Hook caught in the deep for 28 and then removed 2 more batsmen off consecutive balls in his next over to be on a hat-trick. At the other end, Clark Berry came back on and bowled George Tomlin for 18 to leave Dinton in real trouble at 161-9 with 5 overs remaining. Adam finished the innings off though, thanks to a great catch from Thommo at point, and Dinton were all out for 172.
The best bowlers for Banbury were Adam Wirth with 4-10 (off 6 overs), Clark Berry with 2-28 (off 10 overs), Anas Ahmed with 2-31 (off 7 overs) and Mark Wright with 2-51 (off 15 straight overs and a well earned pint!).
It was a great win, with only 10 men in the field, and the win moved Banbury to 4th place in the table and only 10 points behind 2nd place now and 22 points off 1st place.