Last Sunday marked the start of Benson & Ewelme cricket clubs season. We were at home on a truly glorious day, against our old friends and combatants Cholsey. Wanting revenge for last years defeat in the final of the 6’s tournament the day didn’t start out as planned, losing the first toss of the season.

We were put in to bat, and things progressed very nicely for the first fifteen overs, our opening batsmen KK and Ottey clocking up runs at a steady rate with no loss of wickets. Ottey was first out for 15 with the score on 51, but KK continued remorselessly scoring runs at will. At the other end, however, things were not going quite as well with wickets falling regularly despite a nice cameo from Nobby (those beers in the pub before obviously helped!). In fact no-one else in the middle got past double digits until a fine performance from our No.10 John Rees who scored 19, taking him past 1,000 runs for the club at the same time. No mean feat!

KK was the linchpin of the innings scoring a fine 62 of the (what we thought) par score of 140 for 9.

When the Cholsey innings started we opened with a pace / spin attack. Harry Platt opening from the Wood End with what can only be described as a shocker of a first over. We were all rusty having had no nets until the 30 minutes before the game! Things improved for Harry after that taking 2 for 20 off his 7 overs.

At the Road End, John Rees was having quite some game. Asked if he would open the bowling he said only if Aaron wasn’t opening the batting, which thankfully he wasn’t! John collected the fabulous figures of 4 for 36 from his 7 overs, which could have been a 5-for if the captain on the day hadn’t dropped a difficult chance off him. The captain (Gavin) has been blamed for the loss, and will be facing an internal review imminently.

This left Cholsey teetering at 39 for 6, and then 70 for 7. Ewelme & Benson thought it was game over…but then Cholsey strung together a good partnership their unorthodox No.7 scoring 64, ably supported by their No.9 (23 not out).

The second and third change bowlers KK, Andrew, John and Rob all tried valiantly to hold back the tide of runs, but the batsmen now had their eye in…

In the end Cholsey got over the line, although no-one is quite sure whether it was within the allocated overs, or not! Early season scoring needs to be improved upon.

No matter what the game was enjoyed by all, and we had a good turn out from the fans too.