The 1st XI welcomed Wellingborough Town CC to Denton Road, last Saturday. The House won the toss and elected to bat on a flat looking service. Arkanath (12) and Parmar (27) got Horton off to a steady enough start, before the first wicket fell. Harry Mowat moved the ball around well and provided a spine for the rest of the order to bat around. Unfortunately, no one really took the mantle, with only Herrington (17) and Jain (11) making double figures. Mowat was eventually dismissed for an excellent 62, as Horton were bowled out for an under-par 171.

The visitors came out swinging, looking to not be a victim of a Horton trial by spin. They raced to 61-1 off the first 5 overs. Meachem (1-33) snared the dangerous Tom Howes, with Anvit Arkanath (3-73) grabbing the key wicket of the overseas, caught at cover after hitting his first three deliveries for six! Wellingborough got a slight scare at 104-4 but the steadied the ship and reached the total in the 34th, for the loss of 5 wickets. This weekend the 1st XI travel away to Thrapston, looking to return to winning ways.

2nd XI vs. Yelvertoft CC 1st XI

The 2’s travelled to league leaders Yelvertoft for our 8th match of the season.
Having lost the toss we bowled first.

Having looked like they would score in the region of 250-280 mid innings, we pulled it back superbly with some outstanding fielding and bowling, finally restricting them to 200. This was a great effort from everyone and showed a lot of resilience and character.

There were wickers for Rory Monk (1), Steve Finch (1), Elliot Cantrell (2), Zed Mirs (1) and Tom Hodgkinson (3). Everybody bowled well, but the stand out bowler on the day was Tom with his off spin, gaining prodigious turn along with clever and subtle changes in his flight, pace and line, it was a very impressive spell of bowling.

Chasing 201 to win we got off to a good start with Craig Reilly and Abhinav Kulur putting on 30 for the first wicket. Having lost Abhinav for a well made 21 we lost steady wickets throughout the innings and ultimately fell short, being bowled out for 129, falling 72 runs short of our target. There was an very impressive and eye catching innings from Alfie Richardson, coming in at number 8, Alfie played some wonderful and powerful shots all round the wicket and hit the ball so cleanly, scoring 33 at a run a ball.

It was a great effort from all the team on the day, and the 4 x U15’s (Rory, Alfie, Abhinav, and Tom) should be extremely proud of the performances they put in, they were all very impressive and this bodes extremely well for the future of the club.

3rd XI vs. Wellingborough Town CC 4th XI

The 3s turned up to a sleepy Higham Ferrers way before the opposition and inspected a pitch with an interesting down slope. Winning the toss again the skipper decided to bowl and test the Wellingborough batters with our quality seamers. Unfortunately, Elliot Holme’s rockets this week were only finding edges that sped to the boundary and so it was over to Kev, fresh from Thunder Road (i.e. Springsteen at Anfield), to get the first wicket, and then another, and so on, until he had taken 6-31 and thus made up for missing out the previous week. He was ably assisted by Harry Farbon on this 3rd team debut, bowling stump to stump and picking up 3-17 off 6 overs. Along the way Fred took a contender for catch of the season at mid-wicket, Holmes took a blinder at 2nd slip, and Ryan took another sharp stumping opportunity. Streety then finished off proceedings to leave us a total of 111 to reach.

Perhaps it was the dreaded 111 that was at work or perhaps it was tight bowling and low bounce but scoring runs when we batted was far from easy. After 10 overs we lost our first wicket on 17 runs, soon to become 37-3, and the winning total was starting to look a long way off. Vipul and Fred steadied the ship with a partnership of 30, but the overs kept ticking by. It was then over to ex-opening bat Streety to move us forward, showing his experience. When Fred’s impressive and crucial stay at the crease was finally over in the 32nd over there was only a few runs to get, which we did with another 4 from Ian. Another great win and while it was a whole team effort tremendous work by Kev and Fred led the way – chapeau to you two!

4th XI vs. Kettering Town CC 4th XI

Division 14 leaders Kettering 5th was going to be no easy fixture for the Legends this week at the Bozeadome. With all the work that had gone into preparing and protecting the wicket with the rain in the week – the pitch looked a belter!!

Losing the toss, Kettering put Horton into bat, which if they had done their homework was not the smartest choice. Harry Street did Harry Street things and saw off the new ball. Satheesh Krishnamurthy tried to get the score moving but could not get going. With the run rate slowing down against a very strong bowling attack, Sainath Ravikumar played the waiting game and slowly and surely build his and the teams innings – offering sage advice to the Legends coming in. Henry Gallagher went big with 32 from 13 ball at a strike rate of 246 – something Fin Moffat can aspire to!! Sainath finished on 84* and the Legends laid down the gauntlet to Kettering who needed 175 to win.

Harry Street continued to do Harry Street things and quickly dismissed their opener with him and Alex Monk strangling the run rate. The spin of Oscar Herbert and Henry “The Moff” Gallagher got into the belly of Kettering. However their skipper Richard Clark was accelerating the score and they were getting closer to the total – however in the biggest moment of the match Jaiteerth Satheesh held his nerve and clean bowled him. Srikrishnav Sainath and Alex Monk proceeded to clean up the tail and the Legends were victorious by 23 runs.

The win was closer than it looks and whilst we did everything well and key plays went in our favour, we need to remember that “feilding is an attitude” and Monday nights Feilding and Fitness is worth 50 runs in the field which by our own sloppiness we demonstrated quite well this weekend.

Let’s Train Hard – Let’s Play Harder – Let’s Go Antlers!!!