resulting in the team finishing 3rd and only narrowly missing out on promotion in an extremely competitive league. The season however was definitely a tail of two halves…

I couldn’t have dreamt of a better start in the first game of the season at home to Molehill Green. Winning the toss and having them 0-2, (captaincy seemed a breeze at this point) however they rallied to 185 which sadly proved 4 runs too much in an extremely tight game. Frustratingly our next game at Cloghams was abandoned due to rain after new addition to the team Sirijth Raman claimed 3 early wickets. We therefore had to wait till our third game of the season to register our first victory. After Cluderay‘s expensive 10-6-7-0 Takeley were restricted to 158-8 which we polished off only 4 wickets down with overs to spare.

The weather struck again claiming our next match without a ball bowled, and this followed with poor availability leading to a 10 wicket defeat to Aspenden and a 7 wicket defeat at the hands of Woodford Wells with us batting first in both games and only scoring 107 and 113 respectively. This meant after 6 games we were bottom of the table, mainly due to bad luck and the weather.

Our fortunes luckily did improve with the team winning the next 6 games! This must be a record for the 3rd XI? A great team bowling effort against Dunmow meant only 145 was needed for victory with David Hardcastle and Sam Kightley putting them to the sword for a comfortable 10 wicket victory. This was followed by an extremely close victory over local rivals Farnham with only 2 balls to spare! Joe Burslem deserving a special mention for figures of 5-1-20-3 at a pivotal time to restrict Farnham to 172 all out after they recovered from being 30-5.

Strong availability and an impressive batting line up proved too strong for Willingale and Cloghams. In between we were able to avenge our close defeat to Molehill on the first day of the season with an entertaining and fortunate game. Luckily their captain was getting married on the day of the match which resulted in a depleted Molehill side who went from 97-3 to 99 all out. This was followed by the moment of the season with Sam Kightley using a much needed brand new bat. First ball of the innings he played a forward defense which resulted in his bat completely splitting horizontally across the middle, with the bottom half of the bat spinning up in the air and landed square on his helmet! We went on to win the game by 7 wickets

We completed a league double over Takeley before our great run came to an end once the summer holidays restricted availability. We lost consecutive matches to Hatfield Heath and Aspenden. On a tiny pitch at Woodford Wells we were unlucky to be chasing 234 after some fortunate batting. We had a comfortable start however we then threw our wickets away and suffered a major collapse losing 5 wickets for 2 runs, with 3 consecutive ducks. Thankfully Dan Williams was still at the crease with the team needing 30 odd to win and only 1 wicket remaining. Cluderay provided great support which allowed Dan to smash a couple of sixes and lead the team to memorable victory by scoring 32 not out.

Another comprehensive victory over Dunmow was capped by a fantastic and well deserved 101 for Sam Kightley who batted superbly all season with Alex Portas and Alex Cleaves also
getting runs.

We went into the penultimate game of the season in contention for a promotion place, however we encountered a strong Farnham team and we only managed to score 166 which was easily chased down for 3 wickets down. This meant a victory in our last game against Willingale would ensure a 3rd place finish in the league.

A great start from David Wilkinson and Jaya Fernando (who hopefully can be a regular next season) put us in a commanding position before we lost a couple of wickets but thankfully Alex Portas steadied the ship with a fine 41 giving us a respectable 218. A close and tense match came down to the final over with 11 runs required. Up stepped Alex Portas and bowled beautifully with 2 runs required off the last ball. On a large pitch everyone came in to save two, thankfully the ball hit the batsmen’s pad and rolled to Dan Williams at short fine leg. In a moment of madness/confusion, the batsmen went for the second run and instead of walking the ball to the stumps the ball was thrown to the non-strikers end and missed the stumps. A melee of diving bodies ensued and an unintentional block on the running batsmen allowed the ball to be collected and thankfully thrown at the stumps to run the batsmen out and win the match. All this seemed to happen in super slow-mo.

On reflection I’m extremely proud of the team’s performance this year and finishing 3rd was a massive achievement. I’m delighted that in addition to great team performances there were individual successes with Alex Portas being named the Division’s U18 player of the season, a great achievement for him especially as an U14. The ever solid Graeme Sumner made it into the clubs top 10 wicket takers for the year with 20 wickets, and Sam Kightley and myself in the top 10 run scoring batsmen, both scoring over 400 runs.

A great year all round and I hope this continues in 2015

Harrison Barrett