Match report for U15 match – Monday 15th May:
U15s Combine To Beat St Peters
Burgess Hill 90 for 6 (16 overs)
St Peters 77 for 9 (15.1 overs)
Burgess Hill win by 13 runs
Highlights – Lewis Mamoany 33; Joe Hartley 3.1-1-9-3; Jai Sharma 2-0-9-2; James Hole 1-0-2-2.
We lost the toss and were put into bat on a damp wicket, where run scoring was likely to be tricky. Harrison Lees (17) and Joe Hartley (9) opened and set the tone from the off with positive shot-making and aggressive running. Once ‘H’ had departed, the skipper Lewis Mamoany (33) carried on the momentum with a great mixture of attacking intent and cultured guile to keep the scoreboard flowing at a tidy lick. After selflessly running himself out on his last ball before retirement, Ben McNiven and Joe Broughton both came in with brief but useful knocks to keep things moving. Vishva Munasinghe (11) and Toby Fisher finished off the innings – Vishva in particular producing some lovely wristy flicks to the leg side – as we ran up a strong total in the circumstances of 90 runs in 16 overs.
We has a quick turn around because of the failing light, but not before a quick message to the team that a tight bowling performance should be good enough. Joe Hartley opened the bowling and was immediately in the wickets with Harrison snaffling a smart catch. Adam Hughes joined him and showed plenty of the great early season form of late, with Joe taking a great catch for him at deep mid-on. We then struggled for a while to contain St Peters and one of their batsmen reached retirement, and they were keeping up with the required run rate. Jai Sharma came on to bowl and grabbed a couple of well deserved wickets, which was a great reward for his sharp fielding earlier on. Toby Fisher managed a terrific run out, and James Hole came on to bowl a brief but extremely effective cameo with 2 wickets also. When Joe Hartley completed his three wicket haul in the last over, we had squeezed St Peters out of the game.
It was a fantastic, dare I say, professional performance from the boys. The atmosphere in the dressing room was encouraging and supportive, the batting was consistent and well-paced, the bowling was tight, and the fielding was very sharp with everybody staying focused and backing each other up. We even managed to maintain our nerve at the end when they needed 18 off 3 overs, and it could have gone either way!