Qualification on a knife edge.

With two of the teams below them picking up unexpected wins, Horton 3rd XI now have an uphill task to prolong the season and qualify for the knock-out phase of the competition. We lie in 9th place, 10 points behind Long Buckby and 16 behind Cogenhoe knowing that only a win in our final game gives us any chance of reaching the quarter finals of Division 8.

Saturday’s game versus Great Houghton was a closely contested affair but ultimately ended in defeat. Kev lost the toss and Great Houghton decided to bat on what looked like a decent pitch on first viewing. Kev and George Pitt opened the bowling with tight opening spells without much luck and Great Houghton reaching 35 without loss after 12 overs. Paul Wolstenholme took over from George into the wind and immediately picked up the first wicket bowling Hart for 19. Ian Street coming on for the skipper also struck in his first over bowling the other opener, 41 for 2 the bowling changes working straight away. Paul and Ian continued to strangle the batting side with excellent spells meaning that by the 20th over the opposition had only crept to 48 for 2. Two more wickets fell to Paul, one a smart catch at slip by Mark Glover and an instinctive caught and bowled. (75 for 4). Paul finished with 8-1-3-25 and Ian 8-2-1-24, Horton in charge. Finlay Moffat and Vignesh replaced Paul and Ian and once Finlay had sussed out how he was going to bowl into the wind he took two more wickets in successive balls one a good catch on the boundary by Liam Redding and the other bowled. (113 for 6). Good bowling kept the opposition’s runs down until the final over bowled by Kev which saw 3 further wickets fall, firstly a stumping by Ted Flynn (finally succeeding in catching the batsman out of his ground after numerous attempts earlier), secondly a top-edged shot to Vignesh and the final wicket a direct hit run out by the nimble Paul leaving Great Houghton 150 for 9 off their 40 overs.

The pitch had seen a number of deliveries keep low and misbehave so we knew that we would have to bat well to get close. Our innings started slowly with Paul and Mark facing some good accurate bowling at the beginning with both finding scoring difficult. Paul was first to go in the 6th over (5 for 1) and Mark fell in the 10th over (17 for 2) both bowled. Liam Redding after a good start was the third to fall also bowled with the score (22 for 3). A partnership of 30 by Graham Harris and Nik Patel got us to 52 for 4 off 22 overs before Nik was bowled for 6. Wickets continued to fall fairly regularly, Finlay next to go, bowled for 10 (63 for 5) and then Graham caught at mid-on for 19 (64 for 6) after 28 overs. We never really got going and despite 30 not out from Ian Street we could only reach 112 for 8 off our allocation.

Horton had lost by 38 runs and unknown to us had dropped from 7th to ninth in the table. We must now beat mid table Weldon on Saturday and hope that the other results go our way.

Result – Great Houghton win by 38 runs – 20 points. Horton 4 bowling points.

Report by Kev Taylor 3rd Team Captain.