3rd XI vs Woodford Wells CC, 3rd XI

Woodford Wells away, one of the few remaining great fixtures on the sporting calendar, and the game didn’t disappoint with Shenfield surprisingly being asked to bat on the standard Wells road/postage stamp ground. 

Murmurs of twos cricket soon turned to fours cricket for Tredget as he missed arguably his first straight ball of the season and departed for one, bringing in Sapsford to join George Morgan who added 75 runs together before Morgan flicked one to mid off for an excellent 35. Josh Kirby finally remembered he was good at cricket and went on to plunder 138 runs off of around 100 balls terrorising the local residents and breaching several Tree Preservation orders in what turned out to be a match winning innings, ably supported by Sapsford (48), and Jake Sedgley (54) as Shenfield clocked up their highest total for some time setting Wells 324 for victory. 

Jonah Hearn (2-38) and in the few moments he wasn’t bickering with the Pelly family , Frank Austin (2-52) bowled as well as can be expected in an absolute graveyard for seamers. Along with Will Dowlen’s runout Dan Green ( 3-40) swung the fixture back to the opposition taking two wickets in his first over and gradually built the required run rate up to double figures in an excellent spell. Olly Cockerell and Henry Austin joined in the thankless task of bowling to two established batsmen who to be fair made a decent game of it, but were never realistically in charge of a chase of that magnitude. Wells batted out the 45 overs and a respectable 282 was their reward including 99 for veteran and father of half the side Guy Peddy. Josh Kirby quite rightly lead The Shen off the pitch and a third straight win move the thirds up to 4th in the league. The Austin brothers uncomfortably close relationship removes them from selection for next week as they head off to see a band that whoever is reading this almost certainly isn’t cool enough to have heard of as Garry Sapsford takes the reins for a tricky home tie against bitter rivals, Chelmsford. #UpTheShen