In what was a straight play off to win the group, our U14 A team put on a convincing display, which was all the more impressive as we were missing a load of players to school trips/injuries!
It was an even start as our opening bowlers bowled tightly, but St Margs openers also started steadily too. However that all changed when Thomas Greenhill (2-10) came on and clean bowled their best two batsmen in the same over both with absolute beauties. Ben Foster then continued the leg spin domination as he took 3-14 in his 3 overs. Harry Pigram came back to remove their remaining opener either side of 2 run outs before Luca Barnes, another leggy, appropriately finished off with the final wicket. St Margs finished with 100-9 off their 20 overs which was a decent score on a dodgy wicket that had very inconsistent bounce and spun sideways at times.
In response, we talked about how vital it was to set ourselves on this pitch, especially against St Margs’ two excellent left arm bowlers, and that’s exactly what we did. Thomas Greenhill was the anchor we needed scoring 27* off 42 balls, including a couple of glorious extra cover drives in there. Harry Pigram (10) did a decent job with him for a while, whilst Ben Foster was very unlucky to get caught at cover having creamed just inches above the ground. That brought in Zac Saunders, who’s form has completely transformed in the last 2 weeks, who smashed 40* off just 26 balls on a pitch that everyone else struggled on! Zac and Thomas combined perfectly to add 60 together to win the game with 4 overs to spare.
It was a fantastic chase, especially under the circumstances. It means we won every group game, which is a great effort, fingers crossed we can turn it into a QF win! We now await the QF draw, in which we’ll hopefully get a home game at some point next week!