Berkshire men face Cheshire in the Quarter final of the National County Trophy Competition on Sunday at Falkland. This will no doubt be an entertaining game between two excellent sides. Berkshire lost to Cheshire in the semi-final of this competition last year in a high scoring fixture. This time round the men will be hoping to extract some revenge for what happened last year.
Last Saturday the men travelled to the lovely but windy ground at Challow and Childrey to open up their T20 campaign with two games against Oxfordshire.
Oxfordshire had picked a very strong team with 4 Sussex contracted players in their team. Berkshire lost the toss and were asked to bat first. After a strong start by Connell and Lewis the Berkshire boys lost too many wickets through the middle period with several soft dismissals and finished with an under par score of 148 for 9 in their allotted 20 overs. Young Eddie Campion starred with the bat making 30 off 26 balls. The bowlers needed to be at their very best to have even the slimmest of chances against a powerful Oxfordshire batting line up. Harrison Ward opened up for Oxfordshire and blasted his way to 70 off 29 balls which broke the back of the run chase. The Bersksire men never gave up and incredibly took the game into the last over where Oxfordshire got over the line with just 3 balls remaining. Ben Salter was the pick of the bowlers taking 2 for 20 in his 4 overs.
Onto the second game and Captain Lincoln ended his bad run off tosses by winning it and Berkshire decided to bat first. Having learnt from their morning mistakes the Berkshire batters player much better and set an imposing target of 180. Dunnett,Salter,Dalrymnple and Rishton all playing great cameos which gave our bowlers something to defend. Buoyed by our batting performance the bowlers hit their straps early on and reduced Oxfordshire to 35 for 4 from which they never really recoverd and were eventually bowled out for 141 in 19 overs. The wickets were shared around with Campion picking up 3 for 25 and Salter once again impressing with 2 for 22. They were ably supported by Greatwood and Rishton. So in the end both teams had to settle for 2 points each with Berkshire sitting just above Oxordshire in the table due to a better net run rate.
Sussex Showcase game
Berkshire men travelled down to Sussex on Tuesday for their day/night T20 game. Unfortunatley the weather scuppered our plans to play under the lights but as both teams were keen to get the game played we were able re-arrange the game to the next morning.
Sussex had their full strength T20 blast team available and Berkshire had lost the services of Campion and Greatwood as both were unavailable on the Wednesday. This allowed us to give a debut to young leg spinner Abdullah Iqbal who has come through our pathway system. What a game to make your debut in. Sussex won the toss and elected to bat and on a beautiful batting wicket started strongly. Ward and Hughes put on 71 inside the first 6 overs. The Berkshire boys battled hard and fielded brilliantly. Young Iqpal impressed immediately in his first over and got the big wicket of Hughes. Sussex would eventually be bolwed out off the last ball for an impressive 214 runs. All our bowlers were impressive and now it was over to our batters to chase down this mammoth target. Once again Connell and Lewis started brightly and Berkshire rushed along to 49 inside 6 overs before we lost Connell. Sussex tightened the screws and at 92 for 6 the game looked to be done. However Andrew MacEwan and Josh Lincoln had other ideas and took the attack to the Sussex bowlers. Josh Lincoln played a sublime innings and finished not out on 67 off 25 balls with 5 huge 6s. Berkshire ended up short and finished on 182 for 7 off their 20 overs.
