Cricket Match Report: Bathford U13s v Hampset Harriers

Slightly embarrassing confession to start with: last night's match didn't start very well. After traffic delays on the London Road caused everyone to be late we were all in a hurry to get the game started. Yours truly, promoted from scorer to umpire by that cruel taskmaster necessity, hurried on to the pitch and took position at square leg. All the players were there, the opposition umpire in place when it slowly became apparent that we hadn't got a match ball on the field with us. Cue embarrassing and lengthy trudge off the pitch to the kit bag and rummage while all stood and watched. 'D'oh!' as brother Simpson would say.

We batted first and it was a bit of a strange innings. Aside from two notable exceptions in the retired Matt Webb-Peploe (a magnificent 28 as opener) and the not out Ben Deller (17 scored with lusty blows and quite a few heart-stopping swings and misses), none of our 10 batsmen who had a go made it beyond 7 runs. Hampset fielded well, and bowled well, expertly marshalled by their vocal skipper and when the 20 overs had come and gone we had scored 104. It was definitely pleasing that many of our less experienced batsmen had contributed to the total, exemplified by Archie Ball who brought up our 100 with a magnificent 4 only to perish a couple of balls later, but we thought we were about 10-20 runs shy of a decent target.

Wrong. Bathford bowled and fielded beautifully. Of the 20 overs bowled, five were maidens, two of those with a wicket on top. Pick of the bowlers were, well, just about everybody actually, though the record books will show that both Adam Webb-Peploe and Harry Frith bowled a maiden *and* a wicket maiden in their spell of two overs. At one point your umpire had to start pinching himself to stay awake as the run rate slowed to a near standstill. After the 5th over the score was a decent 22. After the 12th over it had crawled agonisingly to 31 at just over a run per over. Hampset had a flurry towards the end but any hope was snuffed out by a magnificent throw down of the wicket by Ollie Phillips from seven metres out that finished their skipper's lively innings off. They kept trying and scored 13 runs off the 18th over, but the target was by now too far away and they never really looked like going past it. Skipper Frith who had considered and placed his fields carefully, can rightly claim a lot of the credit. It was a great victory.

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Batting

Matt Webb-Peploe 28 Retired

Sam James 1 Caught

Gabriel Faragher 5 Bowled

Harry Frith 5 Bowled

Sam Horwood 3 Caught

Luke Hamer 7 Bowled

Adam Webb-Peploe 5 Bowled

Ben Deller 17 Not out

Archie Ball 5 Bowled

Oscar Simons 1 Not out

Extras 24 (2 runs per no ball or wide)

Bowling (o-m-r-w)

Ollie Phillips 2-0-17-0

Adam Webb-Peploe 2-2-0-1

Archie Ball 2-0-2-0

Harry Frith 2-2-0-1

Oscar Simons 2-1-0-1

Ben Deller 2-0-6-0

Gabriel Faragher 2-0-14-1

Sam Horwood 2-0-13-0

Luke Hamer 2-0-17-0

Matthew Webb-Peploe 2-0-9-1

Extras 43 (2 runs per no ball or wide)