Overstone Park were the visitors to Denton Road, last Saturday. With the sun beating down, and a typically flat looking Denton Road pitch, Overstone decided that chasing would be the path to victory. Fin Moffat and Karan Parmar set about their work and batted with intent and positivity in the powerplay. The outfield was lightening, and the boundaries were coming with ease. Horton raced to 93 before Fin (62 from 45) was bowled. Karan (57) was lbw shortly after, the score now 121-2. Horton stalled a little in the middle overs, despite a 45-run partnership from Joe Maw (27) and James Watson (17). Horton faltered to 184-7, before some vital runs from Harry Bennett-Sulsh (24) pushed The House towards a competitive total. When Harry was superbly caught and bowled, Horton were 229-9. This left Will Smith and Ben Meachem (9*) holding the fort. Smith decided the counterattack was the best option and hacked and slogged his way to 50* from 27 balls, to add 58 from the final wicket. This took Horton to 287-9 from their 50.

The Overstone captain, Harry Gouldstone, opened the chase, along with fellow NCCC Academy graduate Fin Cloete. After making it through some early scares. The pair batted with outstanding control and intent. Horton cycled through their bowling options, fielding settings and changing ends but couldn’t find a breakthrough until Will Knibbs came on for a second spell. A full-blooded drive from Cloete sent the ball back over Knibbs’ head only to be caught, one handed, reverse cup, by a flying Fin Moffat – an outstanding piece of fielding. At 207-1, Knibbs (3-57) would pick up two more, including bowling Gouldstone for a classy 131. Smith (2-40) grabbed two in two balls, clean bowling the 3 and 5 to give some drama to the final part of the chase. However, Overstone reached the total in the 45th to claim the 20 points.

2nd XI vs. New Bradwell CC 2nd XI

The 2’s travelled to New Bradwell for the 16th week of our 2025 campaign. New Bradwell won the toss and decided to bat first. All the bowlers bowled really well and were superbly backed up in the field with some great catches and some fine ground fielding. There were wickets for Elliot Cantrell (9.1-0-21-4), Rory Monk (7-2-21-3), Steve Finch (10-3-16-2), and Arnav Jain (7-1-32-1). We managed to bowl New Bradwell out for 120 in the 38th Over.

Craig Reilly and Harvey Cooke opened the innings and put on 53 for the first wicket. Having lost Craig for 24, Harvey continued to combine great shot selection with some excellent running between the wickets to finish unbeaten and taking us to the winning total 3 wickets down in the 20th over. Harvey finished on an extremely well made 74 not out and played for eye catching shots all around the wicket. Sai Ravikumar came in at 4 and played some classy shots until he was dismissed for 18.

It was really pleasing to see the way that all the team responded to the disappointment of our defeat the previous week in an extremely close game against Irthlingborough 2’s.
It was nice this week to have some comments shared with me which came from the Irthlingborough 2’s captain after our game against them;

Quote “ Played in one of the best games of cricket in my time against a very strong Horton House 2s. Future is in good hands there, very good youngsters coming through”.

After 16 completed weeks of the 2025 season, the 2’s have now won 11, lost 4, and had one cancelled, and we currently sit 3rd in the league. With 6 games remaining our target is to win all of them and see where that takes us.

3rd XI vs. Towcestrians CC 2nd XI

The 3s travelled down to south Northants and eventually all arrived at Greens Norton to play a side that we dismissed for 15 in the home match. Clearly their skipper was determined not to repeat that performance and so fielded a side with 8 different players, including a couple still wearing their Greens Norton shirts. Having won the toss and inserted the opposition Horton made a good start, with Harry dismissing the opener for a duck, courtesy of a superb one-handed catch by Andy B. When the second wicket fell (bowled by Harry) Towcester were 46-2, and the potential for another low-scoring skittle was on the cards. However, the highly experienced Turner and Jones started scoring freely on a hard and true pitch. Though we started to take wickets regularly (with Streety, James, and Paul all bowling tight lines and sharing the wickets) the runs also started to mount up and when their 10th wicket fell the total was 199. In hot conditions it was a credit to our bowlers that they stuck to their task and always believed that we could bowl them out, which we did.

200 was a total that could have been chased down but not by Horton on this occasion, since this was one of those batting performances that resembled a game of dominos, as 7-1 soon tumbled into 23-4 and then fell again to 41-7. The skipper took the Duckett/Crawley approach and started hitting out (strike rate 96), before walking for the second week in succession (but this time a definite edge). The Towcester openers bowled at a decent pace and in the right areas and despite a late rally from Ian and Will (who also bowled well in his first game for the 3s), the game was all over just after the drinks break. We could only take some cold comfort in the fact that 67 all out was four times better than 15 all out.

4th XI vs. Great Oakley CC 3rd XI

The Legends were at home at the Bozeadome this weekend. With the home-straight of the season very much in sight – there was still work to be done to maintain our position in the league. With most of the Legends at Monday and Tuesday night training we were confident that we would be able to be competitive against Grat Oakley 3s. The wicket looked dry and hard which was more akin to the A43. Losing the toss, for some bizarre reason the Great Oakley skipper decided to have a bowl which played right into our hands.

Opening the batting Harry Street (18) and Sid Auddy (27) got us off to a watchful start and put on a solid 50 run opening partnership. With Harry getting out to the best ball of the match, in came Dev Satheesh (69) and rode his luck as he found the boundary with regular precision making use of some friendly outfield conditions. With Sid falling, in came Krish Sainath (71) who in contrast played a chanceless innings – a masterclass in putting away bad balls and defending the good ones. Dev and Krish put on 119 runs between them and we finished on an excellent 248 for 3.

With Great Oakley having a mountain to climb, Harry Street and Dev Satheesh made sure that they kept the Oakley openers honest. At first change Vipul Patel, continued his from last week and “Vipped” his way through the top order including the prize wicket of Ryan Harris with a fantastic “Monday Nite” catch in the deep by Jai Satheesh. Krish grabbed a pair and Jai cleaned up the tail – with Horton winning by 100 runs. All credit to Great Oakley who kept us in the dirt longer than we expected and as always played the game in a wonderful spirit.

4 more games till the end of the season for the Legends – let’s keep training and playing for the team and the club – Go Antlers!!!!