U10s too much for Tadworth - winning by 119 runs

Our first game of the season down at Crockham Hill, playing against a Division 3 side in the first round of the cup. Harry Record won the toss and elected to field.

An excellent all round bowling and fielding performance saw us restrict Tadworth to just 49 runs with only 16 coming off the bat! A combination of good bowling and fielding coupled with the use of Kashmir willow bats by the opposition - just doesn't work against a hard cricket ball!

All our players contributed in the field, but special mentions to Louis Bosshard and Freddie Scutt who both took a wicket and conceded just 2 and 3 runs respectively with no wides or no balls - fantastic bowling boys!

Harry Ejje played his party trick behind the stumps for the second match running, fumbling a ball to tempt the batsmen into running a bye before running back, collecting the ball and throwing down the stumps! Harry also took an excellent catch diving forwards from a top edge off Isaac Jones' spin bowling.

Isaac is developing into a decent spin bowler (we could do with a few more spinners in the squad) and picked up another wicket clean bowled. Two wickets for Eddie Hemingway, one for Oliver Gilham with a good catch by Harry Record, along with one more run out saw the team take a total of 9 wickets which left Tadworth on a net total of 195.

After the tea break (thank you to Barry Gilham for a great job on that front (and he remembered the milk this time!)) We were underway batting second.

Tadworth didn't have any particularly quick bowlers, but they were generally accurate and so it was a testament to the boys improved batting that we only lost 3 wickets, two bowled and one caught (those straight bat drills in training may be paying off). Tadworth also dropped a couple of difficult chances, but as a rule our boys defended the straight ones and looked to hit the wider ones.

The boys had 5 positive partnerships of 33, 11, 8, 24 and 38. They also struck twelve 4's and four 6's in a team effort that totalled 103 runs off the bat and five of the boys had net runs in double figures. George (16), Eddie (14), Harry Ejje (20), Harry Record (21) and Isaac (13). We also ran well and rotated the strike which is excellent at this age and more fun for all the boys. It was great to see all batsmen get a good share of the strike and all our partnerships were either 12 balls each or an 11/13 split.

Thank you to all spectators for watching and helping out as needed. Particular thanks to Barry for doing the teas and Nicola who scored for the first time. We need a bigger pool of parents who are able to score and I'm sure if any of you asked Nicola you'd find it isn't such a dark art as it might seem!