On a day where many fixtures across the league were cancelled due to the weather both teams were keen to get a game on with the possibility of gaining an early advantage on others in the league.

Booth’s captain Rick Laycock called wrong at the toss and his team were inserted by Chris Conroy. The changing room was buzzing with energy and excitement as for many, a first taste of premier division cricket was about to begin.

The new ball was taken by Tom Clee down the hill and an aggressive field was set with 2 slips, a gully and a short leg. Hedgetop started life back in the Premier with an excellent maiden. Harry Talbot would share the new ball with Clee and it was him who nearly had the early break through when Rob Laycock who was on 4 at the time, hit one straight to Conroy at mid off. Unfortunately the catch went down and Laycock went on to top score making 74.

With the score 110 without loss the captain made a change to the bowling and brought on Hemingway and Saghir to bowl some flight and guile. It wasn’t long before the change brought about the first wicket of the season. It was Rob Worsnop falling to Hemingway caught behind by Keir Litjens. This gave Hedgetop the much needed lift and soon after Rob Laycock fell to the same man with a catch in the deep from Clee.

A late partnership and a few lusty blows from Richard Laycock (49) and Jack Heptinstall (43*) took Booths score up to 237-5 at the interval. Olly Hemingway the pick of the Hedgetop bowlers with 3-35 from his 9 overs.

Chris Conroy and Keir Litjens were tasked with starting the run chase and it started well when Usman Saghir over pitched and Conroy smashed it over mid off for the first boundary. Unfortunately the following ball Conroy (4) tried this again and instead of clearing mid off he managed to miss time it and give an easy catch to the fielder.

Litjens (5) fell to a good delivery shortly after by Saghir when the ball stuck in the pitch enough to draw a miss timed shot from the opener. With both openers back in the shed Danny Cole and Tom Clee were now at the crease and looking to rebuild after the 2 quick wickets. Danny Cole went into complete rearguard action with only 4 scoring shots from his first 50 balls. Clee (23) was putting the bad ball away nicely before pushing one straight back to Usman Saghir for his 3rd wicket of the game.

Top scorer for the innings Olly Hemingway (41) came to the crease and in typical fashion took it to the Booth bowling attack smashing four 4s and three 6s in his innings. He fell in bizarre fashion with the ball bouncing off his back leg and onto the stumps. This brought Raz Saghir (16) to the crease but he fell when trying to up the tempo caught in the deep.

James Fearnley (22) looked like he would take Hedgetop to their 4th point and past the 180 mark and on towards the target when he fell attempting to reverse sweep the spinner to the short boundary. We lost our last four wickets for only 8 runs and were bowled out for 182 losing by 55 runs leaving Danny Cole stranded on 46 not out from 102 balls. This was a hugely important contribution in the context of the innings helping towards our 3 batting bonus points.

A lot of positives to be taken from the game on Saturday and the team will be looking to build on them when they travel to Mytholmroyd next weekend.

A link to the scorecard - http://www.halifaxcricketleague.co.uk/content/16042016-northowram-hedge-top-cc-1stxi-vs-booth-cc-1stxi

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