Little Bardfield Village CC vs. Braintree CC 1st XI
Date: 9th September 2023
Venue: The Fortress - Little Bardfield
Toss: Little Bardfield lost the toss and were put in the field
Braintree Innings:
For the final time this season the Oxslips walked out to take the field, the temperature was hotter than Satan's living room and the deck was harder than Jason Statham…we were in for a sweaty day's cricket.
Braintree needed to secure 7 points to be assured of safety and a spot in Divsion 2 next week. After throwing a spanner in Dunmow's season the week before could Bardfield drag Braintree down to Div 3 with them?!
With Callum Hymas captaining the ship LBVCC opened with Matt Graham storming down the hill. Braintree started at a canter, racking up runs early as the Bardfield boys acclimatised to the scorching heat (global warming is real people).
Eventually Will Slemmings took Christopher Hinks' wicket with Ben Hounslow making a great catch in the field. Will then caught the next wicket from a fantastic Rory Hitchcock delivery (also stretching his lead as Bardfield's leading wicket taker for the season). Braintree were 75/2 as their Captain, Chris Leech came out to join Louis Cant in the middle.
Louis didn't last long with his captain, departing for 9 runs after being caught by Matt from a Will delivery.
Tom Graham then began bowling down the hill and tore through the Braintree middle order like a wrecking ball (eat your heart out Miley Cyrus), taking 5 wickets for the economic return of 28 runs in his best bowling performance since returning to the club after a spell away.
The Oxslip field buoyed by the expectation of post-game beers from T. Graham re-doubled their efforts to finish up the Braintree innings. Ben was rewarded for a good spell with the ball and took the penultimate Braintree wicket.
Soon after it seemed as if Matt had closed out the innings with Sam Register catching acrobatically behind and the umpire raising his finger to Bardfield celebrations. However, being keen to keep the spirit of cricket alive and well LBV called the batsmen back for a no ball. This gave Braintree a second wind and the final batsmen racked up several more runs before Matt closed out the innings with a plum LBW.
Braintree closed on 195 all out from 40.3 overs.
Little Bardfield Innings:
Matt and Rory walked out for the final throw of the dice in what has been a tough season for Little Bardfield. Our leading run scorers got off to a good start though, Matt seemingly only interested in hitting boundaries was picking out 4's with ease before an on target Braintree delivery hit leg before wicket and sent him back to the pavilion with 23 runs.
Nelion Ridley, who missed a chunk of the season through injury strode out to the middle to deal damage to Braintree but after a promising start Nel was caught having added 13 to our total. Captain for the day Callum replaced Nel and he and Rory set about chasing the Dolphins total. However, LBW reared its head again and Rory was dismissed for 29 from another well targeted delivery.
Daryl Hymas entered the field to bat with son Callum, possibly for the final time. The father/son combination contributed a decent number of runs to the score before Callum too saw the umpire's finger raised aloft for LBW.
Youngest member of the side Sam Register was up next, it wasn't to be his day as he was bowled out for 6 runs and made the long walk back to the changing room. Bowling hero Tom joined Daryl but we then saw two wickets in fairly quick succession. Daryl was bowled first and Tom followed soon after, both deliveries from Louis Cant who would see off the Oxlsip bottom order.
Will was quickly dismissed by Cant for 1 then came some lower order fireworks from Stuart Noble-Conner. In a similar fashion to his performance away at Braintree Stu was clumping the ball around for fun. 24 of his 28 runs came from boundaries (3 fours and 2 large sixes) which had Braintree sweating as LBV edged closer to their total. Ben supported Stu at the other end but was bowled for 6 runs, leaving Sam Goodfellow to try to stick around and enable Noble to clump us to victory.
Sadly the dream was ended when a well set field caught Stu trying to clear the ball out of the park to impress his new wife (congratulations to the Noble-Conner's).
Little Bardfield finished on 187 all out, losing by 8 runs.
This brought a close to a tough season for the boys, who knew going into it that keeping our Division 2 status would be a tough fight. Ultimately not a fight that was won but the boys stuck together and worked hard as a team. Whilst the side only managed 3 wins across the season we came very close in a number of games, just lacking the extra edge to get over the line but certainly causing teams issues and denying what have turned out to be season defining bonus points come the season's end.
Much like the Terminator…we'll be back.
