Chris Dalby and Ian Rogers opened for HBCC, and made steady progress against an enthusiastic and accurate Rufforth attack of Spindlow and White. Having taken the team into the 40s, Ted was first to go, snared LBW by Spindlow. Following the last minute team changes, and off the back of his superb recent form, Gul Hussain was promoted to bat at 3. With Gul at the wicket, even batting responsibly for team, runs are always likely to come at a decent rate with Gul’s repertoire of shots.
Chris Dalby was next to depart, slightly mistiming his shot and offering a routine caught and bowled chance to Evans for 28. This brought Matt Frosdick to the wicket with Gul just a couple of miles up the road from Bilton in Ainsty where they set a new league record partnership just three weeks earlier.
It appears that the pair like batting together as the runs quickly started coming, with both batsmen going over the top to pepper the boundaries, but also running hard and calling well to collect a lot of 2s and 3s putting pressure on the Rufforth fielders.
Fros fell for an excellent 43 as Gul motored past his 50, with the overs ticking by Stu Costello tried to keep up the momentum for the team but fell for 4, Ifty gave as much as the strike as he could to Gul who was closing in on his century before Ifty fell for 9 and Gul finished on a brilliant 95 not out.

Having seen a few balls popping off the wicket, the HBCC bowlers were chomping at the bit to get on with things, and the HBCC attack was launched by Tom Atkinson and Ifty Hussain. The opening pair bowled superbly, combining pace and accuracy, and quickly had the Rufforth openers looking uncomfortable, it took until the 7th over for the first wicket to come, but in this time Rufforth had only progressed to 6, Tom extracting considerable bounce and pace out of the wicket had Ingleby caught behind by Ian ‘ted’ Rogers, this opened the door and the pair maintained the pressure on the Rufforth batsmen, in the next over Ifty had Hildreth caught by Matt Frosdick just behind square leg, the next over saw Tom Atkinson bowl the other Ingleby before Ifty sent back White and Preston in quick succession, White courtesy of another Rogers catch and Preston LBW.
With the odd ball really flying, both bowlers hit the batsmen on their helmets and Rufforth were firmly on the back foot, Tom bowled Evans who had attempted to take the fight to HBCC for 9 as the hosts slid to 46-6 after Atkinson’s and Ifty’s brilliant opening 18 over spell.
Matt Marshall and Abid Hussain came on for HBCC and kept up the attack, Matt bowling some cracking ball for no reward, despite the brave fielding of Turkey close in, Abid was bowling with pace and accuracy, and took the wicket of Rufforth top scorer Mitchell LBW for 19, with Rufforth appearing to be trying to shut up shop, Atkinson was summoned to finish his overs and bowled another couple of quick overs to finish with 3-26 off his 12, Skipper Stelfox brought himself on to see if some trundle would tempt the batsmen out of their shells and sure enough clean bowled Rufforth Skipper Ben Lodge with his second ball. After an awful 2nd over, Stelfox got rid of Hansen, well caught low down by Abid, and with Ifty having replaced Tom, a calling mix up from the batsmen saw a good throw come in from Abid to Ifty and it was game over, Ifty finishing with 3-14 off 11.3 overs .
This was a cracking team performance which sees us move above Rufforth and East Keswick into 2nd place ‘at the turn’ and should see the team travel to East Keswick in good spirits next week.