AUCC played their first match of the season last night, hosted by the Astwood Bank Nomads at Hanbury.
With a few late arrivals on the cards, AU batted first. As is the nature of these games, there was some interesting cricket played.
Nomads opened up with some tidy bowling and made a few early breakthroughs to keep the AU scoring rate down. Toby Wyatt playing his first game of adult cricket looked comfortable, scoring a single from an elegant straight drive from his first ball.
Matty Johnson managed to up the rate before a comedy dismissal when he inexplicably missed a moon ball from Dan Houston, one of his 'variations', to be trapped lbw.
Izzy Fennell then anchored the innings like a seasoned professional, rotating the strike frequently. Her cousin Myles then managed to clout a few boundaries in the last couple of overs to bring the score up to a respectable and competitive 121. Top scorer quite comfortably Wides!
Stu Whalley and Callum Read bowled tidy spell for AU bringing about 2 early wickets. But this only brought Harry Williams to the crease, who bludgeoned a plentiful supply of boundaries to get to his retirement on 25.
The game was starting to shift back in AU's favour though, with some disciplined bowling in the middle overs. Paul Amer bagged himself a couple of wickets in the process.
However, some late powerful hitting from Anthony Brookes took Nomads over the winning line with a ball to spare in the final over.
A good closely fought game, very enjoyable evening.
Thank you to ABCC/Hanbury for hosting us and to everyone that played and we look forward to another game later in the season.