Ickenham CC vs Ealing CC

(Match Report by David Smith)

The day started off with a bit of a surprise with the opposition manager saying that the fixture had originally been planned as an u10A game. Apparently their boys were now however away at tournament so their team was now u11 apart 2 u10 borough boys and a very good u9 but to balance that they only had 9 players! We agreed that it would make more sense for everybody if we played a normal 20 over game rather than pairs cricket but that our boys would bat using rolling wickets (if necessary) to make sure we could bat out our overs.

Our captain Jamie lost the toss and Ickenham chose to bat first. It wasn’t long before we realised just how strong an opposition we were up against as the 1st over went for 16 runs. The field was adjusted over the next few overs to take this into account and we were less vulnerable to their strong batting attack. It was always going to be a hard task to limit the score but the boys stuck admirably to their task with some good backing up and very good fielding that got even better as the innings wore on. In the end the opposition score of 132/2 was actually quite good and we narrowly missed several run outs. JPT held on to a good catch off Zach and Aryan was the one run out that hit the target. Zach was also unlucky to hit the stumps but not hard enough to dislodge the stumps – a moral wicket if not actual.

What happened next was not pretty with Ickenham being extremely competitive with their keeper right up to the stumps and aggressively taking 3 stumpings – brilliant to be fair but not something our boys are used to – hopefully as a group a harsh lesson has been well learned. Their bowling was also really top notch making it hard for our boys to get going. The boys tried their best but this was where they were completely out classed and where those not out quickly generally got bogged down playing sensible shots protecting their wickets only to lose them when trying to seize their chances. JPT did manage a couple of well struck 4’s to top score with 9 but the rest of the batting card reads quite dismally.

All in all a very tough fixture for the boys but hopefully they all had a good time and learned some valuable lessons. They can be proud of the way they stuck to their guns even wanting to continue through the rain and when the cause was fairly obviously well lost.