Report from our 15’s Correspondent, Steve Poulter
The U15s went in search of their first win of the season against Hartley Whitney B on Thursday night. Playing at Bramshill the former Police college. It is an eclectic, architectural location where Jacobian mansion meets 60s council estate. Oakley opened the batting in a similar style, with a beautiful shot directly followed by the ugly loss of a wicket.
Will and Zac in the Twenties
Wintney bowled very consistently making use of the roughed up pitch marks to have the Oaks down to 45 for 5 after 6 overs. An extremely short night seemed in the offering, with only Olly T (9) and Harry T (13) able to add anything to the board before falling to the great shot/wicket loss tandem. However Will McCarthy was determined to ensure his Grandfather would have to wait as long as possible for his coco and proceeded to dig in and play some beautiful shots.
Joined by Zac P in at 8, the pair worked along nicely, before Will fell for an excellent 23. George B (4) succumbed to the great shot/wicket curse and so strode in last man, Freddie ‘The Wall’ Williams. With 7 overs still to go, we needed someone to hang around and Freddie is the guy for the job. When Zac (27) finally fell after some fine work, Freddie was last man standing for the final 3 overs and he fell just 3 balls short of it for a hard earned 4, setting them a target of 120 to win.
Defending 120
Skipper Harry set a deep field to negate the lightning fast outfield, and he, Olly T, Zac P and Charlie all bowled well over the next several overs Oakley restricting HW to mainly singles. Unfortunately no break throughs occurred against the first pair and both retired after 8 overs. However, Harry took a smart catch off of Dylan’s bowling and with the new batter in it suddenly looked poised for Oakley to run through their opposition like the proverbial butter and hot knife.
Could Oakley get the win that had thus far eluded them all season?
A Loss but not Without Positives
Alas it was not to be, despite good bowling from Dylan, George, Thomas and Freddie, we couldn’t reduce them any further and with the wickets in hand HW were relaxed and rattled off the required total with 4 overs to spare.
Despite the loss, there were many positives and so we go again.