U9s come up short against NEC softball league leaders

For the first time this season our choice to play in two softball leagues at the weekend came a little unstuck. A quirk of the fixture list meant that we played the league leaders of both leagues on the same day, resulting in heavy defeats for both sides. Our ESCL team lost out to Merstham and the NEC team came up against a strong Old Whits team who have now won all seven of their games this season.

Still, it was a lovely morning for cricket, twenty of the squad got a game and the boys played really well themselves so no complaints.

Having won the toss captain Alex Bussenschutt opted to bowl first and the boys all bowled really well. I haven't checked all the stats but I suspect this was our straightest bowling of the season with only 18 runs given away in extras (6 wide balls, 2 no balls and 2 byes). Seriously good effort from all the bowlers. Wickets were hard to come by though as Old Whits batted sensibly. The sunbaked wicket and fast outfield also meant the ball came through at a good height for the batsmen and when we strayed onto the legside we were nearly always punished with a boundary. In all Old Whits hit fourteen fours and two sixes to keep their score ticking along.

Alex led from the front picking up a wicket, bowled, in his first over. Oliver Gilham followed up with a wicket, caught, before Louis Bosshard claimed my favourite wicket of the match. Before the game started I had reminded the boys of the need to follow through and keep running down the pitch and of all the boys Louis took this on board the most. Running in to bowl he frequently ended up half way down the pitch in his follow through and was rewarded with a caught and bowled as the batsman could only fend one off to the onrushing Louis - great stuff and he celebrated with a leap over the stumps at the end of the over on his way to keep wicket! At this stage Old Whits were 249-3 after 11 overs but they kicked on from here and ended on 318-4. Pablo Portillo picking up our final wicket in the last over, bowled again.

The heat from the sun and from the Old Whits batsmen caused some of our fielders to switch off towards the end, but it was still a very good bowling and decent fielding performance from the boys. Just need to work on bowling outside the off stump to make scoring more difficult for the batting side.

Old Whits were fielding three of their hardball team and as a unit they bowled as well as we did but with greater pace. Probably our main development point would have been defending against fast accurate bowling. Both our first and last pairs lost four wickets each, six of them bowled. Batsmen who have previously been able to rely on hand eye coordination to hit most deliveries now found themselves swinging and missing with the ball crashing into the stumps.

From 187-6 after 6 overs we staged something of a recovery with some good batting against slower bowling. Alex hit a couple of boundaries and Pablo, Oliver, Freddie Scutt and Jamie Walters lost only one wicket in 8 overs between them. With James Wiseman hitting three boundaries in the 19th over we were on a very creditable 249-8 (with 74 runs and just 2 wickets in 13 overs). Old Whits' Surrey CC bowler Dheer who bowls express left arm pace was on for the last over though and picked up three wickets, all bowled with fast yorkers, pegging us back to 234 - 11 and a defeat by 84 runs.

On paper a heavy defeat, but there were plenty of positives with some accurate bowling and the boys never gave up, continuing to support each other and celebrate the successes we had. We'll be back!

Thank you to Andre and Elizabeth Bruwer who provided tea for 40 boys as well as tea, coffee and cake for parents.

An extra big thank you to my 11 year old son who had a go at scoring when no parents stepped forward. Sorry to moan but that isn't on really, scoring isn't difficult and we can't run all this cricket for the boys without more help from parents.