BCCC – 166-9 (40 overs) V Putney CC – 167-7 in 39.5  overs Lost by 3 wickets

BCCC lost the toss and were put into bat by Putney CC.
The first 10 overs produced some marvellous stroke play with Barnes being at 54 for no loss before Nik got done by an off cutter for 11 looking to launch over mid-off.
Johnny at 3 was quick to be bowled by the same bowler followed by Zef who scored a resilient 34.
Stanley and James steadied the ship scoring 38 and 26 respectively on what was a fairly challenging batting strip.
Hassan scored 11 in a few balls before being given caught behind which he vociferously contested (twice in a row now).
Phil remained not out at 23 (preserving his averages) which certainly was the most painful innings to watch in recent memory.
Despite having a decent batting line up, Barnes only managed to score 112 runs in the last 30 overs post scoring the 54 in the first 10.
The last 10 overs produced 33 runs for 4 wickets.

Pick of the bowler – Ben Brook Putney CC captain who bowled brilliantly to take 5 for 27.

Putney CC started prudently to score 2 runs of their first 4 overs. Stanley bowled an absolute miracle to take out their opening bats Wibberley for 1 followed by Kidson for 14 (who should have been given LBW again to Stanley even before he opened his account).
Gokel and Jarmola played a spirited knock before Gokel got caught off Rojin’s bowling by Nikhil. Following which the next batter Oliver was bowled by an absolute beauty by Rojin.
Jarmola continued to bat well before maestro Davies bowled him a stop ball which he played straight down to Rojin at Covers for 37.
Jenkins and Carnegie-Brown played well to score 16 and 19 before getting stumped and caught off Adi’s bowling.
BCCC exerted good pressure to stop the flow of runs until the 38th Over when Adi threw the ball from 3rd man that landed straight on Hassan’s helmet thereby costing the team 7 runs in total which negated all the hard work.

In summary, BCCC could have been on the winning side here if not for some extremely unimpressive batting, poor catching and sub-standard umpiring by the opposition.
Positives of the game was definitely controlled bowling.
BCCC dropped 5-6 catches in total that could have turned the game around.

Special mentions to Stanley for scoring 38 valuable runs and bowling a dream spell 7-2-23-2, Rojin for scoring 6 runs, bowling figures of 5-0-15-2 and taking the catch of the match running in from long off into mid-off and diving to his right (albeit he did consciously start late to make it look like a delightful take) and also James making a come-back after 30 years to play for BCCC to score imprtant 26 runs and fielding with all his heart.