1st XI Round-up
Saturday saw us make the short trip to Penkridge for our first league game of the season. The team met for a breakfast at Brook Coffee Shop before heading down the A449 to start the season. Skipper Guest won the toss and elected to bowl on a green wicket. Guest and Haroon opened up and bowled with excellent control restricting Penkridge to 30/5. TC picked up a wicket in his first over to take the total to 37/6. Kash chipped in with 2 quick ones to take it to 48/8. Ex Fordhouses player Shaf Ahmed led a recovery scoring 58, taking Penkridge to 121 all out, with DP and Haroon picking up the final 2 wickets.
We went out to bat knowing the ball would move around a little early on so set our stall out to see off the new ball. Niall raced along to 2 off 29 balls before getting caught at third man. Shoaib stuck in and Maz joined him as Macca had a nervous toilet visit meaning he dropped down to 4. Maz faced 11 balls before trying to take a quick single to mid-on…the trouble for Maz is that he isn’t very quick so a run out followed. Macca got stuck in with Shoaib taking us to the brink of drinks before Sho edged to gully. Macca and DP then took us to within 10 of victory before DP got stumped swinging himself round in a circle. TC calmly finished the job with Macca for a fantastic first win of the season.
2nd XI Round-up
After a decent pre-season we entered our first league game against Penkridge believing that if we play to our potential we would end the day with victory.
After losing the toss and being put into bat, acting skipper for the day Jinda Cheema opened the batting with Jem Stack who was making his club debut. After losing 2 early wickets we managed to reach 209 for 6 from our 45 overs with Luke French top scoring with 65 in what was by Luke’s standard a cultured, patient knock.
Other contributions included, Jem Stack 31, Aqib Rashid 30, Sohail Afzal 23 and Zahid Shah 25 not out.
With the Penkridge batsmen getting off to a good start, the breakthrough came when 14 year old senior debutant Ryan Hughes had R James caught at mid off by Aqib Rashid. Jinda Cheema acting skipper and senior player came on first change and helped to tip the game in our favour by taking 3 for 21 in his 9 overs. Another senior figure and also making his club debut came on and tightened the screws with figures of 0 for 17 from his 9 overs. In the final quarter of their innings Penkridge came back pretty strong needing 20 from the final 2 overs. Luke French bowled the penultimate over conceding 8 runs and finishing with figures of 2 for 35 off 5 overs and 14 year Zak Shah finishing with figures of 2 for 45 off his 9 overs. With 2 wickets in hand and requiring 12 runs to win the ball was thrown to 14 year old seamer Ryan Hughes. After being hit for 2 first ball J Oakley came running down the wicket only to be outdone by Hughes who moved the ball away from the oncoming batsman to be superbly stumped by Jem Stack. With the very next ball Ryan clean bowled the Penkridge number 11 batsman to give Fordhouses a 9 run victory and end with figures of 3 for 32 off 7.3 overs.
3rd XI Round-up
Our 3rd’s won the toss and decided to field. That decision proved a good one as we restricted C&R to just 175 from their 50 overs. Rohit Khanna leading the bowling figures with 4 for 28 from his 13 overs.
In response, we knocked off the needed runs in just 35 overs with some top batting. Michael Bellamy, who topped the scoring with an unbeaten 83, was ably assisted by Connor Bowdler with an unbeaten 42.
Great performance all round.
4th XI Round-up
After we lost the toss and were put in to bat we made 243-9 off our 50 overs with Raj Ahir top scoring with 54 and contributions from Ben Clifton (43) Derek Clifton (31 not out) and Harjivan Dhinsay (24).
We then proceeded to bowl C+R Hawks out for 123 with Ben Jones taking a brilliant 6-24. Ben Clifton taking 3-22 and Adam Wilkes finished the game off (1-14). Another great victory to round off a fantastic weekend.