Saturday morning, contrary to weather forecasts, started as a lovely sunny and warm spring day. Of course on arrival at Barrow it was blowing a gale and was approximately -2. The wicket was sticky and the day was bound to get colder so obviously Barrow were hoping to bowl first, so captain Ellie Holdaway confidently met with YMCA’s captain and lost the toss and so Barrow were put into bat.
Ben Skuse and Bernie Forge opened up and batted well despite the poor batting conditions before Ben was unfortunately dismissed by a ball that stuck in the ground leading to him being out caught and bowled. After this there were a series of pitch related casualties and Barrow were beginning to look in trouble. However, James Halladay joined Bernie at the crease. Bernie appeared to have become accustomed to the pitch and was playing shots without too much trouble whilst James scored largely off of ‘quick singles’ that he turned into 2’s or 3’s in a demonstration of why he was recently awarded the ‘Forest Gump Award’ by his football team.
Bernie and James top scored and second top scored with 32 and 23 respectively while other efforts came from some explosive six hitting from Premil Torrington and Sami and a heroic full-length dive from Steve Owen – having already been a good yard past the crease line and with the ball nowhere within sight (he claims he tripped, but we know what we saw). Barrow therefore ended up on 120 all out after 36 overs.
The pitch had dried out significantly after tea for YMCA’s innings which left Barrow with it all to do. Steve Owen and Premil opened up and were unlucky to only gain one wicket from their opening spells. Sami and Paul Gard then took over and Sami’s spin suitably confused the batsman who scored slowly if at all off of his accurate bowling and both he and Gard were particularly unlucky to have a number of dropped catches from their bowling. Gard then struck, taking the top of off stump of Allen with a pearler.
After the slow fall of wickets thus far Barrow once again turned to James Halladay who took 2 wickets in 2 balls of his first over. The likes of Guy Fisher, Ellie herself and James Mitchell continued to bowl well however it was all too late as YMCA neared our total with overs to spare, helped by 44 from Collard nad 26 not out from Pickford. YMCA passing the winning line with nearly 9 overs to spare.
Barrow were left to rue a series of ducks and dropped catches that helped YMCA to a win in this friendly game which was played in a good spirit.