The penultimate Saturday of the season saw two solid victories for our sides.
The 1st XI were at home to Wilsden and going first posted a good score of 194 all out. Thomas Bailey top scored with 46 and debutant Jack Beetham 23. There were three other scores in the low 20s. The Windy Grove side were dismissed for 148 with Tom Robinson taking 4-44, with Andrew Foulds and Haroon Ali each taking a couple of wickets. This moves the side up to 6th in the League just above Wilsden.
The 2nd XI travelled to Wilsden and put the homeside into bat. Their innings would have been in a real mess without Mudassar Riaz who made 72 of their 121-8. He rode his luck several times – but that’s cricket! Hammaad Hussain fu tina fiery spell and claimed 4-25 to go with Paul Wormald’s 3-12. Casper Bean 53, Ben Davey 19and under 15 player Cassian Chandler 13no helped us toa comfortable 6 wicket victory in the 27th over.
Moving onto Sunday, it was Cowling Cup semi finals and final day at Airedale CC. We were in the second semi final up against Division Three champions Riddlesden who recently gave us a spanking by 8 wickets down at their place. It looked as though it was going to be some of the same as they plundered 179-7 off their 20 overs. Ehsan Khan led the way with 77 which included 3 fours and 8 sixes. Our bowlers did their best to stem the tide with Paul Wormald taking 3-24 and Ben Davey 3-19. Your correspondent was full of bravado ah he told anybody who would listen to him that it was not enough. Dominic Kay 29 and Josh Robinson put on 72 for the first wicket in 9 overs – which was not quite up to par. Towards the end of the partnership Josh damaged a “fetlock” and was reduced to hobbling when going for a run. At 94 he was run out for a super knock of 54. He was going great guns at the time having just clobbered three sixes, to go with 5 fours. Embsay hearts dropped at that time, then Casper Bean went for 11 with the score at 130-3 in the 16th over. Ben Davey joined Jonathan Coward and in four overs smashed 44 runs to take the score to 174-3 with 6 balls to go. Determined to get over the line the batters were content to take ones and twos and reached their target with one ball to spare. Jono scored 62no, 3 fours and 4 sixes and Ben 8no. A lot of spectators could not believe what they had just witnessed – odds on favourites to take the cup Riddlesden had imploded towards the end of our innings.
In the final we were playing Oakworth II, one of our nemeses, in cup competitions after they had recovered from 49-6, chasing 83, to beat Hepworth & Idle II by 4 wickets.
A surprise was sprung on the team when the League told them to use a pink ball in the final, which whilst taking nothing away from Oakworth II, proved decisive in the long run. Another thing that worked against us was that because of starting late in the morning, we were hustled to get started in the final. Jono was exhausted after his semi final effort. Josh didn’t have anytime to rest or have treatment on his “fetlock”. We were put in and the pink ball caused surprises for our opening batters with it’s unexpected bounce and we quickly found ourselves 11-2. “Limpalong” Josh and Casper set about rebuilding the innings before the latter perished for 11 with the score at 41. Ben joined Josh and took the score to 107 where the former went for 29. At 114 Josh went for a solid knock of 57. The last four overs saw the Wide Lane well on top as we lost another three wickets for just 18 runs. So, 126 was going to be hard to defend. They didn’t try the crash, bang, wallop theory. In fact, in the whole of their innings they only hit one six. The pink ball didn’t help our cause as we were wided 18 times! We got them to 81-4 in the 12th over but despite the best efforts of our bowlers we couldn’t prevent them from passing the winning post in the 18th over.
Credit where credit is due, Oakworth II were the best team on the day. However, our victory over Riddlesden will stick in the memory for a long time.
Trevor Coe – ECC Chairman
