Semi-final

Upwood arrived at the ground safely after a number of wrong turns and via various routes. Stand in skipper Tom lost the toss and Upwood were put into the field. Sweepers went out to the off and leg boundaries straight away and the off side sweeper were kept busy restricting shots square of the wicket down to a single. During their 18 overs James (super sub) and Nick kept the Fordham openers on a fairly tight leash, conceding only 49 runs in total. There were a few wides but no no balls!

Second changes Neil and Michael also started well enough keeping the score just below 4 an over. Michael was a little unlucky to have a number of skied hits falling between fielders. Squidgey Tuffin nearly pulling off the catch of the month at cow corner but just failed to hang on.

Neil kept plunging away and bowling fullish and straight managed to pick up 5 wickets for 30, helped in part by a cool catch in the deep by Michael. Fordham managed to post a reasonable score that the Upwood players felt that they had more than an even chance of reaching.

Unfortunately, things did not go to plan and wickets regularly fell as the run rate slowly crept up. It did not help that the Fordham fielders seemed to be in the right place and many a middled shot went straight to a fielder. Was this poor shot placement, good field placing, tight bowling or just bad luck for Upwood? – I suspect a mixture of all four.

Upwood can take some positives out of this game particularly the tighter bowling and fielding – very few runs were gifted to the opposition this time. The batting needs improving but that should come with more experience and hopefully in future games the super U's might get better value for the big shots instead of hitting fielders.