A tough day at the office

We arrived at a cloudy and damp Barton Seagrave wondering where the sun had gone.

Horton won the toss (Kev 4 from 5) and put the opposition in thinking that the pitch would help us .
However Barton had other ideas and the opening pair of Jake Bailey and Liam Piddington teeing off from ball one. We had a short 15 min delay for rain which soaked the outfield making the ball difficult to grip. Zahid was removed from the attack after 3 beamers down to the greasy ball. Bailey hit 49 off 37 balls before being bowled by the skipper. Unfortunately we didn't get any joy with Piddington. He made a stunning 249 not out hitting 20 4's and 13 6's in a chanceless knock. The size of the ground and the fact that it's surrounded by fields meant that 13 balls were lost. All of the bowlers got the treatment and Barton reached an enormous total of 428 for 5 in their 45 overs. Wickets were shared between Kev , Ian ,Finn and Nik with the final wicket being the run out which prevented Piddington reaching 250.
Despite this huge total I was really impressed with the attitude of the team in the field. The heads never went down and although the bowling figures make for hard reading we actually fielded pretty well stopping many other boundaries. Everything he hit found the gaps and went for 4 or were hit clean out of the ground.

After an impressive tea we started our reply. We knew it was going to be a tall order with someone needing to score big if we were going to make inroads. Good bowling early on made it difficult for us with Vinny out for 11, 12 for 1. Dave run himself out going for a second , 32 for 2. A good partnership for Zahid and Graham got us to 95 for 3 before Graham was bowled. Zahid , Graham and Harry Knibbs put a few runs on to our total scoring 30,49 and 25 respectively. Unfortunately we kept losing wickets from then onwards and we were finally bowled out for 146 in 37 overs. Barton's key bowlers Oldham 5-32 and Oliver 2-31 doing the damage. Unfortunately the game was marred by an unnecessary incident involving Barton's skipper which we will have to report.

This took the gloss off their victory somewhat but I was proud of our response to the incident and the fact that we didn't rise to their provocation and were a credit to Horton.

We can take positives from the game and be safe in the knowledge that we can bounce back from this defeat with our next game against Raunds on the 13th July.

Result Barton Seagrave win by 282 runs
Points Barton Seagrave 30 Horton 3

Kevin Taylor 3rd Team captain