Blink, and that's the season done.
The final match of the 2024 East Midlands Women's Cricket League - Softball - Division One, season is already upon us. Broomley's were the visitors—top of the table, 4 wins from 4.
Our first-ever game was against Broomley's, normally, this cliched hack would use the metaphor "Men against Boys" to describe the action that day, for self-explanatory reasons the hack cannot go down this route. Maybe, they can use a boxing metaphor. On that original day, we couldn't lay a glove on our opponents, today, we lost, but Broomley's certainly had to endure some tough blows and took the points back to the north of the county with a few metaphorical bumps and bruises.
Losing the toss and being put into bat, Jas Westwood and Jodie Coleman opened things up and faced some very good bowling - in fact, there wasn't a weakness in the Broomley's bowling attack today. It was a case of defending the good ball, and trying to eak out as many runs as we could - ultimately it was a final score of 222 that we posted. Lucy Bateman smashed 3 fours, Jo Hennell hit one, and Kinaari Shah with a couple of well-judged twos. The wickets we lost were earned by the bowlers and not given away by the batters.
Fleckney needed wickets to put the pressure on our opponents, and that's what we got. Jo and Kinaari both picked up a wicket in their first over, as did Jas and Katharine Wright, after the first pair, our lead had improved to 32.
Broomley's were able to build steadily over the next two pairs to give them a lead of 19 by the time the final pair came together, Kinaari picked up two more wickets, as did Jo to really narrow the gap but Broomley's finished 9 runs ahead.
I've not seen something swing so much since the last time the UK went to a general election, that was a swing from the right to the left, Kinaari managed, twice, to bowl the batter with deliveries which were going towards the outside edge of the off stump and ended up clattering into the leg stump. Fleckney's female Jimmy Anderson? Or maybe Fleckney's Lauren Bell?
Fleckney's fielding was brilliant - Katharine at fine leg stopped almost everything - a busy spot in the ladies' game. Jan Nix took 2 skiers - I speak from experience when I say, that when the ball is smashed towards you and goes a long way up into the air, you get a lot of time to think about what can go wrong. Not for Jan, both were held. Sue Westwood and Lucy also both took catches. Nothing was dropped today.
It felt like a win today, such was the pride in the display, probably our most complete performance. Everyone contributed, but the final word should be reserved for Kinaari - she has bowled fantastically all season with no rewards - today? 4 overs, 1 maiden, 4 wickets for 6 runs. The 2nd best bowling figures in the whole league to date.
She's our Kinaari Star.
Team Photo - 8 heroes and 1 coach who is made to look very good by the heroes.
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