Match report by Neil Megson
What a difference a week makes,7 days ago at Hanborough the 3rds finished 5th in a two horse race,yesterday at Bletchingdon we turned in our best performance of the season to win by 87 runs..
Two in a row for me,no hesitation at all in batting on what looked an excellent deck..
Fred Crook and Adnan Ahmed got us off to a great start, 79 for the first wicket,Freds highest league score of 25,good by him.. Enter birthday boy Craig Haupt who along with Adnan batted absolutely superbly, mixing solid defence, scoreboard rotation and putting away the bad ball.. They put on a truly brilliant partnership of 183 as we built up a massive score,Craig out for a quite brilliant 121..15 4s and 5 6s…Absolutely Vintage… Andan who i first coached as a little kid nearly 20 years ago scoring his first 100 for the club,absolutely brilliant to see.. It was left to Craig Lynes,Tom Anderson and Mikey Brown 23no to see us to a mammoth 314-4… a rare 5 bonus runs to us also for the ball hitting the keepers face guard, i genuinely can’t remember ever seeing that before.. …
To win this game we needed Bletchingdon to go for it from ball one and to their eternal credit they did just that.. Skipper Garry Adamson 89 led the charge as they gave it a go,3 wickets for the excellent Tom Anderson to the fore.. Two great spells by Ollie Murrey 3-60 and Mikey Brown 3-68 as we just took wickets at crucial times.. Big Will Hutchinson chipping in with a wicket too.. It was left to Anderson to take the last wicket with 13 balls to go in an excellent game of cricket…
We bowled and batted really well but our catching was out of the very very top draw.. A nice under egde behind, a top catch by Andy Cross,a good one in the deep by Liam Manley in his comeback from injury… A stunner at slip by Haupty but Mikey Browns diving one handed catch off his own bowling just magnificent… A really good all round performance by the team..
Stonesfield at home next week.. Onwards..
Finally a heads up to the Bletchingdon groundsman, its the best pitch we have played on this season… absolutely first class.