Another grey evening for our U15 Girls second league game of the season as we welcomed St Peters to SJP. Adeline won the toss and invited St P’s to bat first. Amy Butterfill and Katie Read got proceedings under way with tight bowling as both openers looked to score freely early on. Our first breakthrough came with the score on 31 when Lily Freeman wobbled a cracking delivery through the defences of the St P’s batter. Their other opener fared better and retired with a well made 25 to her name. Lily picked up her second wicket in similar fashion in the ninth over as we looked to peg back our opponents who had scored quickly. At 10 overs we changed ends and this change brought about our third wicket, Amelie Palmer-Brown castling the dangerous Evelyn Parle with a superb, full delivery. Mention must also go to Chloe Haigh and Amy Read who bowled well without reward, Amy had been called up to play at the proverbial eleventh hour and did everyone proud, her second over was brilliant and she was outstanding in the field, as were all of the girls. The run rate slowed as Amelie bowled her second maiden and Lily finished with fabulous figures of 2-10. Katie and Amy B returned to close out the innings and Katie was rewarded with our fourth wicket, again the batter bowled by a full delivery. St P’s finished on 86 for 4 from their 20 overs, a magnificent effort from our girls to keep them the total so low given that after 12 overs they had 63 on the board and would have been looking to push on. Jodie Johanson was again in excellent form behind the stumps with several excellent takes.
Adeline and Jodie made their way to the middle and Adeline was into her stride quickly, unleashing a fearsome pull shot which raced away to the boundary. Brutal on anything short, she quickly accelerated as Jodie rotated the strike before starting to find her range as well. A couple of beautiful drives from Adeline raced away through the off side and with the girls picking up regular singles as well the scoring rate continued to rise. Adeline retired for the third time this season, a fantastic 27 runs under her belt. Amy B came in to bat and smashed her second ball away to the deep square leg boundary before clubbing her fifth ball away to midwicket to register her second four. Jodie played a couple of very fine pulls away to fine leg as we raced along towards our target. Three more fiercely struck boundaries from Amy took her into the twenties before Jodie retired for a brilliant 25, her second successive retirement. Chloe joined Amy at the crease and watched from the non-strikers end as Amy smashed a boundary to the midwicket rope to register a career best 27 not out and take us to a deserved victory.
Thanks to Geoff for taking on umpiring duties this evening. Thanks to Jackie for tea organisation and to everyone who helped, it makes such a difference to have such a willing group of volunteers and helpers. A huge thank you to Amy Read for playing with very little notice, you were fabulous! Thanks as ever to all who supported the girls and to Martyn Box who ran the electronic scoreboard for the evening. It was an absolute pleasure to watch that performance this evening girls, especially when we consider that we had 4 U13’s playing up. Let’s take plenty of confidence from this and carry it forward with us for the rest of the season!