Last Ball Thriller For First Team

Slough’s plan of opening with a ‘pinch hitter’ proved successful during the opening overs as Ali Ahmed and Yaqoot Rafiq the got off to an excellent start.

The ever reliable and experienced Simon Stanway kept his cool and made the initial breakthrough. Slough continued to push along scoring frequently, however the First Team bowling attack kept to the task and took wickets at regular intervals.

Stanway picked out two wickets from his 10 over spell and this was equally supported by Andy Harris and Scott Rolfe who picked up two and three wickets respectively. Slough ended their innings on a respectable score of 228-9 off their 50 overs.

With AJ Woodland on 12th man duties at Lords, David Burnell had a new opening partner in Shelvin Gumbs. This was great to see the First Team opening the batting with two batters aged 17 and younger. The pair put on an opening stand of 64 to set a decent platform when Gumbs out for 26 when he was dismissed by Saif Zaib.

Michael Payne (pictured) and Burnell then added 79 for the second wicket, but after the loss of Burnell for 64 the game took an unexpected turn as Payne worked with the middle order to get us to our target. Slough fought back taking quick wickets and the target of 228 seemed a long way away as the First Team’s last pair was at the crease with 21 runs still needed.

Harris and Chloe Hill continued to work the ball around and take quick singles. Then as a result of Slough’s slow over rate, they were penalised by six runs at the end of the 49th over. This meant with nine wickets down, the First Team needed eight runs from the last over, and a final ball thriller saw the First Team winning by one wicket.