Saturday afternoon saw an air of excitement and tension as the Abberley Warriors prepared to play the Bilton Grange Lions. The Abberley Arena (formerly the swimming pool pitch) with brimming with anticipation as the crowd of several dedicated parents, 6 horses and a couple of peacocks waited for the action to start.

Captain Hugh won the toss and elected to bat. Things looked a bit ominous to start with as the Bilton Grange opening bowler paced out his run up to within 2 metres of the boundary! Undeterred our first pair of Rohin and Richard played sensibly with Rohin striking a couple of boundaries.

Our second pair played well with Gerald prodding to protect his wicket, whilst Wulstan at the other end decided to take the direct scoring route and smashed the ball to the boundary (and over) with regularity. Hugh and Stas, Rory and Alex all defended well against some good bowling but the score was still accumulating.

Our final big hitting pairs of Chris, Joon and Matt, were slightly constrained as the Bilton opening bowlers returned and the overs evaporated. At the end of our innings we had a respectable total of 106.

At the end of the innings Bilton Grange had a total of 105 but only 5 of their batsmen were out (-5 runs for each wicket) giving them a total of 80 to our 46. I like to think that we had a batting victory with Abberley scoring 69 runs from the bat as opposed to Biltons’s 22, but they certainly had the edge in the bowling department.

Well done to captain Hugh, who marshaled the Abberley team very impressively, continually offering positive encouragement to both batters and fielders during the afternoon.

Overall a great exciting match, with some fine batting and fielding from both teams, well done to all those that took part.