Match report

After a late raid on resources due to first team and Silverstone commitments a depleted Guilsboro 2 team took to the field against Kibworth. With 2 team skipper Mike Coyne being called up for first team duty Nick Keyte was elected captain for the day. He won the toss and decided to bat.

Nick and stand in opener Tom Bradshaw opened the Guils innings. The wicket was lively after a shower during the first 4 overs of the game and the openers found runs hard to come by. Aided by byes and wides they reached 21 in the 9 over before Nick Keyte was caught by the keeper. Will Davies then came in to join Tom and shared in the highest partnership of the match. They put on 51 of which Will Davies scored 36 before he was 2 out after playing several classic drives through cover and extra cover area. With the score approaching 100 after 30 overs Kibworth made the bowling change which was to radically alter the course of the Guils innings. Lee Butler came on and Jon Buckby hit his first two delivers to the boundary followed by a 2. Going for another big hit he topedged a return catch to the bowler running round to midwkt. This exposed the long Guilsboro tail and 108 for 4 soon became 132 all out. Aided by some poor batting and another fine catch by the keeper Lee Butler was able to claim 5 cheap wickets in 5 overs for 27 runs. Tom Bradshaw batted over 2hrs and for 35 overs for his 25 before he was 5 out to Jon Butler before Lee Butler cleaned up the tail.

The Guils all out score of 132 in 40 overs looked below par for the Guilsboro wicket. They would have to bowl and field well to defend the total.

The Kibworth openers faced the same problem as the Guils openers with the pace of Jon Bucky making the ball bounce and James Nuttall bowling swinging deliveries at the other end. They progressed to 20 with some alarm before the were out in quick succession Sam Pole bowled by Buckby for 11 and Ben Matthews well caught by Jordan May off James Nuttall for 2. The next pair for Kibworth Rikesh Patel and Jay Boucher also found life difficult and after several close calls for lbw and catches behind they were both out for 15 one to Jon Buckby and one to James Nuttall. They had taken the score to 54 for 4 and crucially seen off James Nuttall's opening burst. Skipper John Pounds and that man Lee Butler then came together and after early scares they began to cut loose and made good use of the short boundary on the rugby field side of the ground. Hitting regular boundaries the score began to pick up. Jon Buckby got one through John Pounds defence and he was out for 20. Lee Butler was next out for 27 completing a fine all round performance for Kibworth. This left just 20 runs to get. With the momentum in Kibworth's favour Scott Clayton swung his bat to good effect to see Kibworth home for a four wkt win and maximum points.

So Guils could not disguise that their weakened batting line up lost them the game and although they fielded well Kibworth kept finding the short boundary to keep their scoring momentum going. If they had scored another 30 runs or some close calls went in their favour it may have been different. Kibworth however were well worth their win and are the strongest team that Guils have played in Div 12 this year.