Bamford-Fieldhouse u15s 123-3 - Royton 86 all out (Home)

Bamford Fieldhouse Cricket Club

On a sunny but cool evening, the home side won the toss and decided to bat, but Royton immediately took the initiative with Tesz removing Ahmed Nawaz for 1 with only 4 on the board. 

Matt Buckley joined Joe Smith-Butler at the crease and they quickly got the run rate going up with singles and twos as good fielding from the visitors made the boundary hard to find. As the boundaries started to come, the run rate was approaching 7 per over before Dalziel bowled Smith-Butler for 39 at quicker than a run a ball. 87 for 1 soon became 91 for 2 when Burrows caught Buckley (42) off the bowling of Kent. Alex Willis (17) and Danny Matthews (14) were the not-out batsmen for Bamford as they finished the innings with a competitive total of 123 for 3.

Bamford opened the bowling with Nawaz and Smith-Butler but after a maiden the latter had to come off due to injury. He was replaced by spinner Joe Mitchell who went on to take 3 wickets for 10 in his 3 over spell. Morrow (13) and Smith (17) batted very patiently, putting on 31 runs before Willis caught Smith off the bowling of Callum Belfield. Ben Durrant took the next 2 wickets, removing the opener Morrow and the hard-hitting Tesz. Matthews was next to get a wicket and the tail was cleaned up by Adam Deaville who got 2 for 4 from his 1.3 overs leaving the visitors 37 runs adrift.

Although Bamford’s bowling won them the game, it was a mixture of the good and the bad and the ugly. 9 of the 10 wickets were clean bowled but on the downside there were 27 bowling extras and this needs to be addressed as the second half of the season begins.