BANSAL MAKES STUNNING 134 BUT 1st XI FALL 7 RUNS SHORT AGAINST GRANTHAM....

A tough day was in prospect as we took 2nd in the league at Heslam Park. We lost the toss and Grantham batted. After 15 overs the score read 92/1. Some wayward bowling and iffy fielding helped Grantham get off to a flyer early on. Some tight bowling in the middle helped us keep a lid on the scoring rate and after 30 overs Grantham were 162/1 but still 300/320 was looking likely. A brilliant fight back with the ball and some excellent fielding helped restrict them to 252 all out. Ben Brumby took 3/47, Karanjit Bansal 2/61, Garmesh Chand 2/48 and there were a couple of run outs.

The run chase started off solidly as we went to 40/0 in the first 10. The mindset was to keep wickets in hand to stay in the game. At the 25 over mark the score was 95/2 with Karanjit Bansal and Arbind Singh building well. But their 61 run partnership ended when Singh was dismissed for 35. The score on 125. Another 70 run partnership followed between Bansal and Ian Snowden (18). This partnership saw Karanjit Bansal reach his first 100 of the season and our first ever centurion in the Lincs ECB Premier League. We were still in the game at 205/4 in the 44th over. But once Karanjit Bansal was dismissed for a brilliant 134 off 153 balls the task got harder and we ended up just 7 runs short. He played a real captains knock and took the game close. He spent a total of 6 hours on the pitch in this game!

It was a fantastic effort and run chase against a very strong side. Frustrating we got so close and couldn’t get over the line but a very valuable 10 points. We sit on 99 points at the half way stage of the season 3 points off 5th place. Big second half the season coming up.