Cricket Report

Audlem CC .v. Onneley CC Saturday 19 April

Audlem's Saturday cricketers staged their pre-season friendly at a cool and blustery Gorse Croft last Saturday when they played hosts to neighbouring Onneley CC.

The game was a tight contest with Onneley eventually coming out on top by the slender margin of 9 runs. Skipper, Chris Shenton won the toss and inserted the visitors and managed to get an early breakthrough with Jake Topping removing the opening batsman with the score on 14 but a fine stand between skipper J. Short ( 32 ) & Tom Salt ( 91 ) gave the visitors the upper hand in the early stages. Tom was the standout performer for Onneley batting through almost the entire innings to take the score onto a respectable 226 for 7 off the allocation of 40 overs. Audlem's bowlers stuck to their task to contain a good batting line up from a team who play a division higher in the league structure. Wickets were shared between Jake Topping, Vijan Rahul, Simon Swift, Alfie Hardy & Dave Parkinson. Bertie Hardy was unlucky not to join the list, having Tom Salt dropped twice in his marathon innings.

Audlem's batsmen managed to keep up with the scoring rate against some decent bowling with Dave Blatherwick ( 20 ) & Irfan Shaik ( 31 ) the star performers in the early stages of the innings. A 105 run partnership between Dave Parkinson ( 73 ) & Vijan Rahul ( 39 ) set the game up for a tight finish but with the return of the opening bowlers runs were hard to come by despite the valiant effort from Simon Swift who finished on 18 not out, Audlem finished just 9 runs short on 217 for 9.

Next Saturday Audlem kick off their league campaign when the travel to the Staffordshire Moorlands to take on Knypersley CC then the following day the Sunday X1 play hosts to Westminster Park CC from Chester. Both games have a 1.00pm start.