Ashford Ladies vs Bells Yew Green Ladies

Women’s Cricket Southern League Division 2, 21 April 2013

Bells Yew Green 135-6 (Hannah Lautch 41, Yolandi Maynier 8-0-25-3)
Ashford 129 (Becky Halls 34, Lydia Harris 4-0-11-2)

The Bells Yew Green openers started steadily, and Ashford struggled to make a breakthrough until Nazia Sadiq took a brilliant stumping to take the first wicket. Tight bowling by the whole Ashford attack, well backed up in the field, kept the visitors under 50 at the halfway drinks break. Hannah Lautch then started to up the pace, running at every opportunity, until a good catch by Elize Brown ended her innings on 41. Beth Evans made no mistake with a good catch to give Hannah Merchant a well deserved wicket, and Yolandi Maynier weighed in with three wickets, her best league bowling for the club.

Chasing 136 to win, Ali McCreedy and Becky Halls started carefully against some good, straight bowling, but struggled to score runs at the required rate. When Halls was joined by Jenny Tippell, they began to make headway, Tippell finding the boundary with ease as they added 50 to the score. Wickets then fell steadily, as the batsmen had to take more chances to keep up with the asking rate of around 5 an over. Making her Ashford debut, Katie Butler had no time to play herself in, but was up to the task, scoring quickly before she was run out, pushing for an extra run. The Ashford attack was depleted by injuries to Gill Bonham and Angharad Purser, and although the final few Ashford players swung the bat at everything, the team came up 6 runs short, and were left to reflect on what might have been.

Alison McCreedy