For our first home fixture the u15's welcomed Sunbury CC to Twickenham Green. Last season Sunbury not only won the u14 Division One title, but they were also age-group County Champions in both Middlesex and Surrey! They won again last night too, but only by 4 wickets and with 7 balls to spare. The fact that Twickenham were able to run such a successful and experienced team so close is a great credit to our boys.

The foundation of Twickenham's good performance was laid in a fine opening stand of 61 by Nikhil and Ankit. Unlike previous games when our batsmen have been slow to get going, Nikhil and Ankit both got off to strong starts, playing their opening bowlers with ease and confidence. Nikhil was eventually bowled in the 12th over for 26. Ankit went on to make a marvellous 65, a very good innings against some fine bowling. Support was provided by Taylor and Faizan. At the end of the 19th over Twickenham were 111-3. A triple wicket maiden in the final over gave the Sunbury bowling card more respectability.

As might have been expected from such strong opposition Sunbury chased down this total, but only with 7 balls to spare. They were always ahead of the run-rate however, and Twickenham's main chance of success lay in taking wickets. Unfortunately some of our bowling was wayward, as the total of 27 extras indicates, and although on occasions our fielding was brilliant, on some others it was below standard. We gifted them too many cheap runs. However, after an opening stand of 35, only one other of their batsmen was able to dominate, and 6 wickets were taken (Nikhil 2, Faizan 2, Freddie and Ankit). If we had given away less cheap runs the pressure might well have got to Sunbury and the result could have been different.

However, this does not take away the fact that this was a fine performance by the Twickenham u15's against a very strong side, and all the boys are to be congratulated for it.

Thanks are due to Ahmad Rabbani for scoring, Simon the groundsman for preparing such a good pitch, and to Nigel for coming down to the club and opening the bar for us. That is all very much appreciated.

Our next game is on Friday 18th May away at Richmond CC (no easy games for us this season!)