Croft unable to turn best performance of the season into a memorable victory
Avoncroft’s Under 11s responded to the challenge of taking on unbeaten Kidderminster on Sunday by producing their best performance of the season with both bat and ball.
Kyle Shaw (4-20) led the way for Croft with the ball by ripping through the Kidderminster top order. In his first over, he had Stuart caught behind by Ben Taylor for 1 before bowling Newton for a duck. Kyle then followed this up with two further wickets, bowling the dangerous Jones for 16 and picking up the wicket of Smith for 10, before taking a catch off the bowling of Oscar Jinks (1-19). At the halfway stage, Kidderminster were 5 wickets down but they showed why they are challenging for the U11 Premier League title this year by demonstrating an impressive depth in their batting resources. B Jones (33no) and Link (14) led the visitors fight back, with only Rohan Levy (1-10) adding to the wickets column thanks to another catch by wicketkeeper Ben Taylor. Despite this fightback, Croft stuck to their task to the end as Kidderminster reached 121-6 from their 20 overs.
The “early season Croft” response would likely have been a flurry of early wickets followed by a gutsy recovery to add some element of respectability to the score. The Croft of the last few weeks has, however, started to find ways to do some damage with the bat, and this was very evident in their response to this tough run chase. Fin Morris and Henry Jenkin set an excellent platform for the innings with a partnership of 45 from the first 10 overs. Fin was the more aggressive of the two, hitting 3 fours in his score of 24, but he found a useful foil in Henry Jenkin, whose resolute defence and awareness in his running between the wickets added far more to the partnership than his score of 6 would suggest.
Once both openers had been dismissed, Oscar Jinks took up the charge with an elegant 21 that included some top-drawer cover drives. Matthew Athey (11) and Ben Taylor (5) both added support to the run chase and were unlucky to lose their wickets in an attempt to keep up with a run rate that was always just out of reach. As the overs ran out, Croft were left on 113-5 and although 8 runs short, coaches and parents were all very impressed with the mature approach to the run chase and with the improvement shown over the last few months.
Match Report by Paul Athey, 13/07/2017
For full scorecard details of the match and all other matches, use the below button to be directed to the club results page, hosted by Play Cricket.
Click here for scorecard
