U13 Friendly v Rockliffe Hall - Report

Some of our Under 13s who have played predominantly pairs cricket in the past gained some valuable T20 match experience at Rockliffe Park. Seeing a good wicket and short boundaries, captain Henry Shepherd sensibly elected to bat first. Ben Dale got us off to a quick start but was unlucky to get cleaned up by a good ball from opposition opening bowler Joe. Zak Cleminson did well to see off some sharp bowling early on and Charlie Stephenson made an excellent 32 with boundaries in all corners of the ground, but from being 50-1 after 10 overs we struggled to maintain our momentum. This put consecutive batsmen under pressure to score quickly as soon as they came to the crease, and the resulting run of low scores saw us finish on 86-5.

In the spirit of the friendly match, Shep gave all 10 outfield players a bowl. The standout bowler was our opener Daniel Sharp whose pace certainly matched his last name (sorry, I don't have my dad's ability at puns - Pete). He started the innings with a wicket maiden and finished with 1-2. Harry Mauer also managed a wicket maiden in his 2-7. Edmund Richardson and Ben Dale also returned tidy bowling figures, with 1-6 and 1-4 respectively. Unfortunately, we simply didn't have enough runs on the board and two good Rockliffe batsmen called Matthew and George exploited the gaps between our close-in off side fielders to take the game away from us.

The reasons for the loss can be summarised as batting too defensively and fielding too aggressively. This was a good run out for our team and a true friendly, and hopefully gave some of our lads who haven't had much game time a lesson in the T20 mindset, where you have to worry much more about scoring and defending runs than defending and taking wickets.

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