Little Hallingbury Cricket Club

Hallingbury lose to Roding Valley by 4 runs

After the late arrival of Roding Valley, the match finally started around 2.15pm., Little Hallingbury won the toss and elected to field.  Two good opening spells of bowling from Alex Turner and Waheed Iqbal saw Roding Valley restricted to 3 an over.  Alex spared Gareth's blushes behind the stumps by bowling Kartik three balls after being dropped.  


Waheed came to the party soon afterwards as Gareth redeemed himself behind the stumps taking a smart catch.  A tight spell from Sudip helped reapply some pressure after a series of fielding errors, which allowed Bakar to amass 104 runs.


James Budd bowled well, particularly in his second spell and was unlucky to have three catches go down off of his bowling. Ben Shiels on his debut, picked up Irfan LBW and was unlucky to not have a second a ball later. The umpire wanted to give the new bat "a chance as it was only a Saturday game"!!!  Roding Valley closed on 246-7


The Hallingbury innings started well despite the early loss of Stewart.  Sunny batted well until a top edge saw him depart for 38.  Alex Turner batted in a controlled fashion making 53 before he too was caught. A mini collapse in the middle order saw Gareth joined by Raj B with over 90 runs and 15 overs to get them.  As the light failed, Raj (30) delivered some lusty blows and Gareth (40) scampered to bring us to needing 24 runs from the last 4 overs.  Unfortunately both perished leaving James Budd and Ben Shiels with the task of picking up the last 16 runs.  Despite a fantastic cameo 10 from James Budd, we fell short by just 4 runs.


The end of the match was not without controversy. Waheed noticed that a change of bowling had brought a bowler back that had already bowled his 10 overs.  As he brought it to the attention of the opposition, Ben was bowled.  Only to be sent back out with the over restarted. James Budd took nine from that penultimate over, before Ben had the misfortune of being bowled for a second time, leaving us 4 runs short on 242 all out


 A fascinating match with lots of positives and some obvious points to improve upon.