U19s beat Colchester in last over thriller!

In a must win game to keep our U19 hopes alive, we played Colchester last night, who are one of the best teams in the whole competition.

They won the toss and batted first, with Sam Robinson bowling beautifully taking a vital early wicket. Their other opener came out swinging, hitting 4 huge straight sixes before being extremely well caught by Benjy Furrer off Aidan Murphy. After getting their big hitter out, all our bowlers bowled really tightly and we fielded excellently as a group. Harry Olorenshaw (2), Aidan Murphy (2) and Will Lambert all took wickets, before Kieran Surujbally came on and cleaned up the tail taking 3-7 off 2 overs! Colchester finished 116 all out, which was a fantastic effort from the lads.

Unfortunately we started our batting innings very poorly losing 3 quick wickets to fall to 15-3 off 5 overs. Murray Davidson was the only top 4 batsman left and knew he had to bat long and that’s exactly what he did. He batted intelligently, mixing strike rotation with the odd big shot to keep the pressure on, including a huge 6 over square leg. After an unadvised leave, Callum Smith came in and after hitting a couple of singles, walked across his stumps out of nowhere and hit a monster 6 over cow corner. He was unfortunately then run out, but Murray continued on getting to a richly deserved 50. Just as we began to look favourites with 3 overs to go, a mixup between Benjy Furrer and Murray meant Murray was run out for 59. In response, Benjy ran down to their best bowler and smashed him for 4 giving us the upper hand. After getting 10 off the penultimate over, we only needed 1 to win off the last over. As victory seemed inevitable, Sam Robinson was out LBW to the first ball before Lambo was bowled on the third ball of the over leaving us 8 down still needing 1 off 3! The atmosphere from the BSCC crowd was very tense as Kieran Surujbally vitally got bat on ball and we scrambled home for a magnificent win with 2 balls to spare!

That win means if we win our last U19 game on Friday, we will qualify for the QFs! Congrats to all the lads on a great performance but special credit has to go to Murray for his unbelievable 59 under extreme pressure as everyone fell around him.