Full Reports of all Belhus matches to follow
Batting first on a warm sunny day, Belhus reached 49 without loss only to see 4 wickets fall for an extra 20 runs. U15 Billy Winter then
batted excellently with Steve Huckstepp to take the score to 148 before being caught & bowled for 41 including 8 boundaries. Steve Huckstepp was still at the other end and reached 85 before having his middle stump taken out of the ground by Rana. The tail wagged to take the score beyond 200 at the end of the 49th over. Richard Waters then pushed the score along to 223 in the next 2 overs before being bowled for an aggresive 47, thus ending the innings.
Belhus opened the bowling with Dale Kenyon who bowled a good line without much luck, and the spin of Marc Lewis. At the end of the 7th over both had picked up a wicket and the score was 16. Prophet came to the crease and lofted his first ball just over the top of mid off for 2. After this he kept the ball down and scored 72, being the fifth wicket to fall and helping to add 163 runs to the Benfleet total. The 7th wicket fell with 17 needed to win off 5 overs, and with wickets beginning to fall there was still a lot of work for the batsmen to do. However Rana became positive with the bat and took his team to victory with 22 not out. In hindsight Belhus were 20 to 30 runs light. Add this to sloppy fielding during the Benfleet innings and these add up to a loss rather than a victory. Captain, Richard Day says “Some small improvements are now required by the team to make sure we do not start to slide down the table.”
