Abberley Hall - Sports News

1st XI Abberley 74 all out Winchester House 122 all out - Lost by 48 runs

Winchester House were always likely to provide strong opposition but for a chunk of this game, the 1st XI matched them. The pitch was difficult with inconsistent low bounce but for the third game running an opposing batsmen has batted with grit and ground out a 50. Have you been watching boys ? The bowling was good with Hugo again posing problems taking 3 wickets and Max twirling away to bag 3 too. James bowled his best overs of the term by far and there were 4 good catches held. Winchester House scored 122 and that was a fair target.

Max and Francis saw off the opening bowlers and at 28-0, I had momentary visions of a gritty win. In the space of one over we lost our top 3 batsmen, all of whom contributed tho their downfall. Before you knew it we were 34-7, some rank shots and some awful running. James, Robbie and Matt gave the score an air of competence but 74 all out was a disappointing reply.

We lost 3 of the first 4 last year before winning 11 of the next 12. Lets hope history might repeat itself but there is going to have to be a little bit of intelligent thought with a bt in hand if this is going to be possible.

Winchester House posted a large score but our bowlers made them work for their runs. Arthur.S was ever accurate and Nick B. bowled well. Corny.C mixed his off-spin well and Miles B.,our other spinner, took an excellent caught and bowled.
The outfield was fast and the fielders had to chase hard to cut off runs Joe P. reacted well to help bring about a run out as did Corny.C.

Having not made more than 100 so far in the season, we knew we had to knuckle down and make some good partnerships. Second ball of our innings and a terrible mix up between our openers resulted in a run out. 0 for 1 chasing 151. Not the ideal start! However William C. showed maturity in his splendid innings of 81 and he was well supported by Ollie.J and Corny.C. The last over approached and we needed 9 to win but unfortunately we fell 6 runs short.

Batting first we got off to a ponderous start. Wickets tumbled as we were 10 for 4 after 10 overs. However, thanks to an unbeaten 33 from Andrew and a quick-fire 24 from Tim, we reached 110 for 9 after 31 overs. On the small pitch this was never likely to be enough.

And so it proved as the visitors bludgeoned their way to the target for the loss of 4 wickets in 21 overs. They deserved the victory as our bowling and fielding looked weak. Will managed to take 2 wickets, however, and it was nice to see a Spanish wicket for Pablo F.

Batting first, we got off to a bit of a poor start against some excellent opening bowling from Malvern, not withstanding that they held on to two good catches to dismiss our batsmen. Our middle order played better, scoring off of the weaker bowlers and the score started to look a little better. Then our next three batsmen managed to get themselves run out leaving us on the precarious score of 38 for 7! Fortunately Malvern’s second string bowlers were not as potent as their opening attack and Ed, James, Simon, Matt and Henry managed to takes advantage and the score began to accumulate, with us creeping to 107 before being all out.

The Malvern openers were both very good batsmen and launched into our opening bowling attack of Charlie and George; the boundary appearing to be a magnet for the ball. Things looked a little bleak at this stage of the game with Malvern scoring 29 run off the first four overs.

Time for a bowling change; on came James and Gavin. Was this James A bowling or a reincarnation of Glen McGrath? James was superb; with his second ball he clean bowled one of their opening batsmen, two balls later he struck again clean bowling their number three batsman. What a start. Two wickets in his first over.
Gavin bowled his first over and managed to dismiss the Malvern star player caught and bowled, all of a sudden the momentum of the game was changing. James continued to bowl with great determination taking a further two wickets and with the addition of a couple of run outs we had taken 6 Malvern wickets for the addition of 6 runs. Victory was within our grasp. Malvern’s remaining batmen’s managed to score more runs but wickets continued to fall, with Freddie taking the last two wickets giving Malvern a total of 76, and us a great victory by 31 runs.

A brilliant day boys, we all fielded well and kept trying our best.
Special congratulation to James, our star man of the day, who finished with figures of 4 overs, 2 maidens, 4 wickets for 4 runs. Fantastic.