Merrow U15s win again!

Through deepest, darkest Surrey we went to Lurgashall, where Grayswood U15s play their matches on a pitch which is surrounded by village life although no longer used by the village team. A very pretty scene with the church on one side, a shop on another, various sized houses all around and all under the watchful gaze of those frequenting the Noah’s Ark pub.

On a very hot and sunny morning Grayswood bowled first. Merrow elected to open the batting with Harvey Kirk and Tom Sandison, not our usual openers, but they got us off to a good start. Fast forward a few overs and with our first four batsmen back in the pavillion, we were looking a bit wobbly. Fortunately James Munt and Ben Barnes managed to stem the flow of wickets by being sensible, hitting the bad balls and rotating the strike. Ben in particular, began to score freely and eventually retired on 30 with a few overs to go. It was great to see Ben back on the board with some runs after a relatively quiet sequence of innings with the bat. He went on to score an unbeaten 50 for the Sunday side later on in the day. Merrow finished off with a score of 152 which was a good total given our position at the ten overs stage.

In keeping with the ‘didn’t bat so must bowl first’ rule, we opened the bowling with Michael Gallagher (described by one of their batsmen as ‘fast but slightly inconsistent...’) and Daisy Barnes (described as ‘really good!’). Completely unfazed by bowling to U15s, Daisy rose to the challenge by starting things off with a wicket-maiden! At the other end Michael induced a steepling over-the-head catch to James Munt at extra-cover who pouched it very well - never easy those sort of catches. The Grayswood batsmen put up a good fight but were always slightly behind the run-rate. Jimmy Woodriffe came on to bowl towards the end of the innings and conceded only three runs off the bat in his three overs. In the end we won by 30 runs.

A good and eventually comfortable win for the U15s and our assorted younger players. Nikhil Bali made his batting debut and in his own words declared ‘I scored my first run for the U15s - so I’m happy.’