PRESTBURY v HAWK GREEN

Hawk Green travelled to Prestbury for what would be their 3rd game of the season and on winning the toss stand in skipper, Jack Needham, decided to bowl first, opening the innings for the home team were McKeever and Bringly against the Greens opening attack of Needham and Dylan Heginbotham. The wicket was very slow and with an uncut outfield runs were obviously going to be hard to come by, Heginbotham was first to strike in the 6th over bowling McKeever for 3, 8 – 1, he was replaced by Ahmed and he and Bringly took the score to 20 when Needham had Bringly caught by Heginbotham for 12. Ahmed and Oldfield started to rebuild the innings against the Greens 1st change bowlers of Logan Jeffs and Jordan Henderson but with the score on 85 – 2 Heginbotham was reintroduced with immediate success as with his 3rd ball he bowled Ahmed for what was a very interesting 36. New batsman Bateman looked completely out of his depth and with his personal score on 2 he was caught Jeffs bowled Heginbotham, 99 – 4, his replacement Hall faced George Ridings first over and took 14 runs, 4, 6, 4, from it and was then excellently caught by Needham off the last ball of the over trying to emulate his previous shots, 114 – 5. Costella was next to fall bowled Ridings for a duck, 118 – 6, with the total on the same score Heginbotham bowled Oldfield for a dour 37, 118 – 7. Cowley-Jones and Kirkland added 24 more when Needham brought himself back into the attack and replaced Heginbotham with Peter Richards and both had immediate success with wickets in their 1st over with Richards removing Cowley-Jones, for 15, from a great catch by Heginbotham, 142 – 8, and Needham bowled Kirkland for 8, 143 – 9, and Richards wrapped up the innings when he bowled Bourke for 11 with the final total 155. Heginbotham was the pick of the bowlers with 4 – 32 with Needham, Ridings and Richards 2 each. The Greens opening batsmen, Josh Hampson and Ben Littler appeared to be in no trouble against the Prestbury opening attack of Ahmed and Bourke with Hampson being the more dominant of the two, not until Bateman replaced Ahmad did Prestbury look likely to take a wicket and first to fall was Littler LBW to Bateman for 19, 53 – 1, the Greens next three batsmen Richards, Clarke and Needham all fell cheaply to leave the Green teetering on 89 – 4. New batsman Jordan Henderson showed his intent to dominate the bowling and having taken 12 from the first over of Hall he was bowled off the last ball of the over for 25, 129 – 5, new batsman Logan Jeffs was soon into his stride and when Costella came on to bowl the Green needed 16 runs for victory and Jeffs completed the victory by striking 3 consecutive maximums giving the Green victory by 5 wickets with 17 overs to spare an excellent victory given the adverse playing conditions. Throughout the Greens innings Hampson stood firm and played some excellent shots with a great deal of patience closing on 71 not out and carrying his team to glory, Jeffs closed on 23 not out. Next week the Green are at home to Maritime on Saturday and at home to Birch Vale on Sunday in the National Village Cup wickets pitched 1 – 00pm for both games.