Barrow Gurney’s Sunday XI finished their league season with a win away at Keynsham.
Winning the toss, the Barrow captain, Mark Forge, soon found himself needing to be involved in a recovery after the early loss of Ali Hood without scoring. Forge (10) and Colin Fletcher dug in with a 42-run partnership over 13 overs, before daughter Bernie came to the crease to inject some quick running and several well-struck boundaries, which were hard to come by on the large playing area.
When Fletcher departed for an increasingly fluent 39 (the highlight being an exquisite straight drive), Mark Gracey joined Bernie to put on a 50 partnership, with Gracey playing some delightful shots of his own before being run out going for another quick single. With Bernie taking full advantage of some short-pitched bowling, Guy Fisher came in to make a quickfire 22 as the innings concluded on 185-4, with Bernie remaining unbeaten on 58 at almost a run a ball.
After tea Bernie was soon in action with the gloves taking 2 early catches off the pace bowling of Mark Fisher including the key wicket of the opposition captain. With accurate spells from Leo Brace (5 overs for 10 runs) and Adam Brace (8 overs for 29), the pressure was on the young Keynsham batting line up.
Guy Fisher found the pitch to his liking as his leg-spin got prodigious turn from the end of season pitch, deceiving 2 batsmen with the turn to bowl them, before giving Bernie another 2 victims behind the stumps with a catch and a stumping.
A late-order revival could not prevent Guy taking season’s best figures of 5/28, before Oscar Livesey (2/33) gave Bernie a fifth victim followed up by inducing a hit wicket dismissal. Mark Fisher (3/14) then finished things off to give Barrow and enjoyable end to the season.