CCA Junior League 1B

Longstowe 114 all-out

Cokenach 116-3

Cokenach won by seven wickets

COKENACH secured their second victory of the season on Saturday after a confident display against relegation-threatened Longstowe.

Captain Matt Stevens won the toss and put the hosts into bat on the sticky wicket owing to the previous day’s rain. And this quickly proved the right decision as Cokenach opening bowler Peter Clarke beat the bat regularly as the batsmen found it hard going and lost both their opening bats to the Cokenach man.

The next two batsmen found it just as hard and after 15 overs they had scored just 24 runs, then with Tom Peacock replacing Rychard Field at the other end, he struck immediately taking two wickets leaving Longstowe on the back foot at 41-4 off 20 overs, with Clarke finishing his spell with impressive figures of 10-6-8-2.

Longstowe’s No.5 N Key had to try and help his side post a defendable score and he was very watchful nudging singles and hitting the rare bad ball, but with some excellent fielding from Cokenach it was getting increasingly difficult to score. And when John Ford replaced Clarke he took two wickets to leave Longstowe floundering at 66-6.

The lower order provided some much-needed runs for the hosts, who eventually reached 114.

In reply, Cokenach started terribly when opener Stevens called for a run only for his partner Paul Cresswell to get his studs caught in the wicket and was run out by a metre for a duck.

Rychard Field and Stevens went about rebuilding the innings, but the bowling was incredibly tight with R Dunham bowling 30 consecutive dot balls to Field, who couldn’t get him away.

Stevens faired a little better hitting a few boundaries until he got a ball that hardly bounced and was given out lbw for 22 with Cokenach on 27-2. R Dunham finished his 10 overs with great figures of 10-5-13-0. Phil Seale came in and scored 19 before being bowled and with the score now on 67-3, Field and Clarke pushed along towards the target, with Clarke (21*) hitting the winning run in the 36th over while Field ended on 38* from an amazing 137 balls to register his third not out innings in a row.

Field commented on his long innings afterwards: “I just wanted to get the job done and make sure we got the 20 points I didn’t care how long it took or how bored my team mates got.”