Tollbar Year 8 Cricket vs Branston Community College

May 15th, 2008

County Cup round 1

After a long mini bus trip the year 8 cricket team arrived at Branston (Lincoln) for their first cricket match of the season. Previously our team had played just one match in year 7 due to the appalling weather conditions last year but with some good training sessions the team felt confident about today’s match.

Branston however were last year’s County cup finalists and looked intimidating dressed in full whites, practising their rather fast bowling techniques. This wasn’t going to be an easy task.

After winning the toss our captain (Hornby) elected to field first. Our opening bowler (McKay) faced the county’s opening batsman and sent him back with the first ball. As the innings progressed it was clear that a lot of runs Branston scored were from extras given by our bowlers and a few fielding mistakes. This was going to cost us later in the game. A few highlights in this innings were catches from Costello, and McKay, a run out by McKay and a two more bowled wickets from McKay and Browne. Branston scored a massive 90 runs from this innings giving us plenty to chase.

Branston’s fielding side had clearly played a lot of cricket before this game. Their bowlers were fast and the fielding was immaculate giving away only 11 extras. Our boys felt pressured in this environment and played rushed shots which in turn led to them being caught out on a few occasions and bowled on others. The Tollbar team managed to score 39 runs all out.

The team learnt a lot from this performance and are keen to prove their ability in the next fixture.