Match report by Mark Austin
Women win two games at Stony Stratford to sit top of the table after week 1.
Due to holidays, injuries, school events and kids sports we managed to get 7 to play their youthful 2nd team, albeit full of County players. As a result they conceded both games.
Skipper Bethany lost the toss and we duly fielded. Katie opened and, in the same manner as in last week’s Men’s game, had a Diamond duck. She took another wicket off the 1st ball of her next over too but sadly they were the only negatives on Stony’s scorecard. We restricted their 1st two pairs to a credible net score of 46 (after deducting 10 runs for wickets lost), but the final two pairs opened up, scoring 37 and 48 respectively. Stony finished on net 131. Bowling highlights were Rosa’s 3 overs for 20 and Zoë Lee 3 overs for a miserly 13
In reply, we struggled against some excellent bowling, with runs at a premium and losing 6 wickets in the 1st two pairs. The final two pairs only lost 1 wicket between them but, again, were restricted by some good fielding & bowling. We finished on a net score of 25.
We batted first in game 2. Despite losing more wickets (8) we batted much better. Bethany & Rosa scored +12, Zoe & Karen were doing superbly until a flurry of wickets in their final two overs but still managed to finish with a positive net score, Florence (U13) batted with a borrowed player and finished not out across two games on debut. Muqaddas & Katie then helped double our score as we finished on 47.
In reply, we were definitely in the game after 2.2 overs (1 run in it). However, Katie’s knee then gave way and we lost one of our main bowlers. However, thereafter, we only managed one wicket (Muqaddas C&B) but Stony were “restricted” to 122. So an improvement of nearly 31 runs on the score difference despite a 2 wicket swing. Bowling stats – Bethany bowled 2 overs for 15 and Rosa 4 for 29
We go on to next week against another 2nd team, at Oxford, with us sitting top of the table