BSCC u12 v Hertford u12

A disappointing loss to Hertford who hadn't won a game this season. After a magnificent win at St Margetsbury we just didnt get going against an improved Hertford side.

Our bowling was quite straight from all the bowlers, but we were often a bit short of a good length and got punished at times when we didn't pitch it up. Noah bowled particularly tightly taking a wicket as well. The highlight of the bowling though was Jake Shirley's 3 wickets in his two overs towards the end of the innings, pitching the ball right up to the batsmen.

Unfortunately our fielding was just not good enough last night and this allowed Hertford to dominate. There wasn't enough concentration on the pitch and a lot of the energy seemed to be going on chatting and dancing. We hardly ever seemed to pick up the ball cleanly, dropped some reasonable chances, had too many overthrows and allowed the batsmen to pick off easy boundaries. Every player needs to up their game in terms of focus and commitment when fielding. We know we can field well, we just need to commit to the game.

With 116 on the board for Hertford, our innings started reasonably well. Matthew and Will Hale had to face some ferociously fast bowling for the first few overs and coped fairly well before Matthew was caught out to a good ball. A terrific partnership between Will Hale and Will Dommett then kept us up with the run rate and with about 7 overs to go we looked in with a reasonable chance. Unfortunately the run rate dropped a bit after that and there was some reluctance to take quick singles (with many wickets in hand we need to be taking more risks to maintain a decent run rate). Jake A hit a few nice shots to keep us close to the run rate with 3 overs to go, but once he had gone to a good catch at mid off, we couldn't get any momentum in our batting as Hertford brought their star bowler back on, and we fell 4 runs short at the end.

Not our best result but there was some good bowling and batting on display. As ever, the learnings are that we need to focus on our fielding and chase a run rate effectively when we have many wickets in hand.
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