Report by Tom Serby:
As the majority of the St Giles team were Senior 1 players, today's game promised a good quality match - and so it turned out, played in glorious hot sunshine. There were five under-15s playing (three for St Giles and Samuel and Felix Serby for Remnants), all five buoyed up by playing together in Comberton Village College's Cup run which saw them crowned last week as the Cambridgeshire schools U 15s champions.
Batting first, the St Giles openers started watchfully (mainly due to the excellent and pacey debut bowling of Adam Long, 3 overs for just 6 runs, which had the batters ducking), but the openers then adjusted to the twenty/20 tempo and, luckily for us, they got out just as they were beginning to unleash some powerful shots down the ground. Karti Malik (sometime Remnant) and James Salmon then accelerated against the quicker bowlers but Karti was undone by a flighted delivery from Alec Armstrong (3/30), who was ably supported by his spin twin Faruk Kara (2/19). Felix, Eli Elwood and Naveen Chouksey all threatened but couldn't stifle a St Giles batting order that was long, so although we took eight wickets we were set 138 to win.
Samuel Serby (20 off 25 balls, with a well executed cover drive off his first ball, thereafter picking gaps with singles) and Michael McCann (26 off 30 balls, biffs all round the wicket) put on 49 for the first wicket, looking comfortable apart from when dealing with Michael's eccentric array of calls (yes and no being seemingly interchangeable in his calling lexicon). Our problem was though that just as the St Giles team all batted, so they all bowled, and wickets fell regularly, so that going into the last 5 we faced a tough ask of more than a run a ball with the St Giles openers brought back. Adam Long (25 off 19 balls) and Felix Serby (16* off 21 balls) didn't get he benefit of a bad over which is what was required, so we finished 4 short, a result that had always looked on the cards, well though we had played.
Olly Rex, as always, captained the team superbly (for the last time before departing for "the big smoke"), helping out his bowlers with encouraging words and nobly witholding himself from our attack so the bowlers got a chance to redeem themselves for the odd wayward over, which might in the end have been the difference between winning and losing.