Sherborne 1st XI 263-9 (55 overs) Jordan G 74, Patrick R 44
Blundell’s 267-5 (43 overs)
Lost by 5 wickets
In truth Blundell’s were better than us in all three areas of the game and thoroughly deserved their win. It could have been very different if the rest of our top seven had been able to support Jordan G effectively. When he was dismissed off a leading edge for an impressive 75 off 76 balls we were 115-2 off 20 overs, a great platform for a score of 300. Our other batsmen mostly got in as scores of 17, 18, 24, 13, 44, 3, 19, 14* and 5 suggest, but apart from Patrick R who contributed a decent 44, nobody went on and many got themselves out, reverse sweeping, wafting, chipping or missing straight ones. On the surface 263-9 looks a reasonable score, but on that surface it was probably 40 or 50 runs short. Seven of the 9 wickets fell to the seamers and the ball did move around a bit.
We needed to get at Blundell’s early with several wickets while the ball remained hard, but the Blundell’s openers blunted our attack effectively and Holley especially put the bad ball away well. Blundell’s were also 110-1 off a similar number of overs to us but the advent of their Somerset batsman Linnitt totally changed the game. Having scored a double century against us last year he took to our spinners in particular like a pike to a spinner, striking 68 off 43 balls (with 58 in boundaries) and taking Blundell’s to 192-3 off only 29 overs. There were a few half chances but when Ben D had him LBW, the rest of the Blundell’s team only needed to score at under three an over, which they did for the loss of 5 wickets. Ben D was probably the pick of the bowlers and Hugo B operated tidilly, picking up a wicket on debut, but in general our lines and lengths were not good enough on a pitch with little margin for error. 31 wides was also far too many. It was a tough day at the office but the way the boys kept going showed there is a decent team spirit and games like this will help us improve.