On a very pleasant day Bramcote U11 cricket team travelled inland to play a 25 over match against St Martins Ampleforth (SMA).

Bramcote won the toss and elected to bowl. Oscar Herring promptly clean bowled the SMA opening batsman with the first ball of the innings. The next five batsmen were all bowled with good straight balls leaving SMA at 21 for 6 after 6 overs. Oscar Herring collecting  4 wickets along with Charlie Watts and Josh Kidger contributing 1 apiece.

The introduction of Charlie Cowen brought about another 2 wickets, the first by an unconventional method. A fairly straightforward catch, of his first ball, was dropped by Oscar Herring, who then made immediate amends by picking the ball up and, with an excellent throw to Toby Wrightson, claimed a runout. Three balls later Charlie Cowen picked up a deserved wicket. After this the Bramcote bowling dropped off, and with several miss-fields, the SMA score started to creep up. Henry Truelove broke up the 8^th wicket partnership and then a final runout ended the SMA innings.

As per the previous match the instruction was for the batsmen to be careful and wait for the bad balls. However the SMA bowling was tight, if not particularly threatening, and the Bramcote batsmen found it difficult to score. The first three batsmen allowed the run rate to steadily increase and only managed to put 29 runs on the board after 13 overs.

This left the following batsmen with too high a target to chase. The overs eventually ran out with Bramcote 24 short of the target. Pick of the batsmen was opener Harry Anderson, who was eventually run out for 33 runs after a long innings.

Although Bramcote could have pressed for a very quick win, with the opening pair of bowlers in fine form, the match was lost with some poor boundary fielding and loose bowling - extras being SMA’s highest score. In addition the top order batsmen could also have tried, once set, to up the tempo.  

SMA 100 runs all out (21 overs)

Bramcote 76 for 8

Bramcote lost by 24.