A Memorable Victory for the Youth Team
Haverhill’s young guns proved more than a match for Bury St Edmunds in the cup final over at Thurlow. Fair to say that Bury were a tad more than confident of victory before a ball had been bowled yet Haverhill were keen to avenge Bury’s victory over them in the Weston Colville tournament.
Haverhill lost the toss and were asked to bat. With a group heavily loaded in favour of the young and inexperienced, some of the players still only 8 years old, the decision of batting pairs was a tricky one. It was decided to put the big hitters top and bottom of the order and hope that the youngsters stepped up, and stepped up they did.
Scoring was very slow in the early overs with Charlie and Toby who were tentative and nervous but managed to keep the wickets to a minmum. Next in were Kiernan and Kieron Webb who went the same way steady but only losing one wicket. The third pair saw the youngest and most inexperienced pair of Zak and Jack! play their hearts out and ended up not losing a wicket and putting on a credible amount of runs. The big hitters of Harry, Luke, Patrick and Marcus came in last and pushed the score along to 246-5 which was felt to be a few too many run short bearing in mind that Bury generally score 290+ every game this season.
What happened next was nothing short of a miracle in sport, it was like David and Goliath, like the second team trying to beat the thirds……Every player to a boy bowled well and fielded well, Bury only managed to get 5 Haverhill wickets when bowling, Haverhill took 13 (thirteen) wickets which was the difference. All of the bowlers managed to take wickets with great support in the field from Kieron, Toby and Harry who took magnificent catches. At the close Bury managed to creep to 207-13. Made Martyn smile…a lot (I did not get a photo of that).
Congratulations to Luke Sharp who won the Man of the Match award.
