Last Saturday Barrow Gurney Second XI played Twyford House, a team who, despite being near the bottom of the table, had won 7 of their last 9 games. Of the 2 they didn’t win, one game was abandoned and the other they lost against top of the table Patchway.
Mark Gracey lost the toss and was put into bat by Twyford’s stand in skipper. The runs were fairly hard to come by on a very slow outfield but after 20 overs, it was looking like a score of around 150 would have been very good, but after some quick scoring by Jonny Sykes (52) and Paul Glazzard (33no) building on Will Kerswell’s hard fought 39, Barrow ended up setting Twyford House a score of 216 for the win.
Twyford House started impressively with M Carol deciding the best way to combat the slow outfield was to hit the ball over the top. Roger Finnimore dropped him on the boundary when he was on around 35 before Frank Forge took the key catch later on off Mike Lilley’s bowling for 67. With Carol out Twyford struggled as the remaining wickets fell at fairly regular intervals with the exception of the solid Kevin Blake who batted for most of the innings for 41. There were a few dropped catches which would and should have finished the game earlier.
After 40 overs, Twyford House could only score 146 for 8 with the wickets shared 2-a-piece by Kieran Owen, Ellie Holdaway, Mike Lilley and Will Kerswell. Special mention should also go to Barrow’s stand in keeper, James Riley, who only gave away only 1 bye.
This 29 point win (out of a maximum 30) keeps Barrow nicely in promotion contention with 3 games to go. Next week they face a trip to bottom of the table Stoke Gifford.