Brooklands beat Davenham

Brooklands 1st Xl started the new cricket season away at Davenham, planning to build on their league winning success the previous season. Now in CCCL Division 1, this first game would provide a good test, and a benchmark for how the team would shape up in the season ahead.

Brooklands won the toss, and under the warm Easter weekend sunshine chose to bat. Brooklands lost early wickets falling to 29-3, which brought Jim Hugall to the crease with Ali Buchan, who fought hard against some good bowling to build a solid partnership. The next wicket fell with the score at 84-4, Jim scoring 24 before being caught behind to Daniel Hancock who would finish with 4 wickets. AJ Hart joined Ali at the wicket and the score quickly accelerated passed 100, to 134-5 before Aj fell for 32. Ali had now brought up his 50, looking in fine touch, batting very well with the lower order before being out in the final overs for a well deserved 71. With contributions from the lower order Brooklands ended up being bowled out for 177 in the 49th over. A good score, on what had ended up being a more difficult wicket for batting due to the amount of turn for spinners and slowness of the pitch.

Davenham's innings started well losing only 1 early wicket to Rob Leach's bowling, and their batsmen taking advantage of some edges through the slips and aggressive shots over the infield, taking their score to 62-1 in quick fashion. However the introduction of Joe Gill and Raj Singh into the attack brought 2 quick wickets, and the score now at 65-3. After some tight and at times unplayable bowling the momentum of the game swung in Brooklands favour, taking 5 more wickets, but with some bad balls offered too the score advanced to 114-8. Joe Gill ending with good figures of 2 for 27 from 7 overs. Brooklands sensing victory increased the pressure in the field, but with some fight from the Davenham tail and clearing the boundary advanced their score to 150, before the final wickets fell. Rob Leach and Kevin Carroll finishing with 2 wickets each, but the stand out bowler of the day was Raj Singh, taking full advantage of a spinning wicket, ending with figures of 4 for 26 from 13 overs.

A solid performance from Brooklands first time out in Division 1 gives a great start to the season, and a solid platform to build upon. Next up for Brooklands are local rivals Sale, at home on 27th April.