Wednesday saw the first home match for our U13s against Hayfield. We start the season with a full roster of players, which will allow for player rotation as the season progress’.
A very promising start from High Lane, saw Finlay Julier bowl Hayfield on the 3 ball of the first over. Unfortunately this spurred Hayfield’s opening pair to grab the bull by horns and really show their worth, by scoring 32 runs off the first 4 overs. The second set of pairs also saw the fall of the second wicket to Sam Shepherd on only his second competitive ball, long may this continue. During this period one of our players had to leave the game due to an injury, but thankfully the boys not playing in Wednesday match had still come to the game to support their team mates, so new starter Daniel Turner took to the field in their place.
As the match continued it was clear that Hayfield were motivated to score singles and more on every deliberate and accidental opportunity that arose. For the last 3 pairs only 2 more wickets were taken by Tom Barber and new started Edward Doust. Some really energetic fielding by Tom Wood and Daniel Turner stopped a couple of additional boundaries happening.
In the end, Hayfield finished their innings on a very good score of 366.
It was now High Lanes turn to take the crease... Our opening pair of Ben Finlay and Edward Doust were able to obtain a score of 20 runs after their 4 overs for the loss of one wicket. However, the strong bowling from Hayfield saw another 9 wickets being taken over the remaining 4 pairs. We saw some secure batting from High Lane, but not the same level of aggressive run securing that we saw from Hayfield.
In the end High Lane finished with a score of 192 and a loss. As a club we have a squad of players where the majority are new to cricket but are really willing to put in the effort to improve. There was a lot that all of the boys should have been very proud of, and we saw glimpses of hopefully things to come as they grow more confident in their abilities. This was always going to be a difficult game and we are proud that our boys never gave up trying to do their very best throughout the whole match.
Wednesday 12th May will be our next home match against Chapel en-le-firth, with the match starting at 6pm.