Scorecard

Witham CC IV v Eight Ash Green Cricket Club Two Counties 2nd XI (Saturday) on Sat 05 Jul 2025 at 1pm
Eight Ash Green Cricket Club Won By 6 wickets

Match report Witham 1s, with a spatering of Essex players, were underway on the main pitch as we arrived for our Div 9 game this weekend. However, as they normally do, Witham brought some spectators across to the second pitch for a well supported game. 

With there looking like it had a bit of life in the pitch, Captain Murray won the toss and decided to bowl.

Agrawal (1-37) and Murray (3-33) opened up, but neither could find their length and their bad balls got what they deserved by the Witham openers as they raced to 47-0 from 5. The outfield was lightning fast and anything not directly at the fielders seems to go for four, and sometimes ones directly at their fielders did too.

This was enough for Murray, not on it today removed himself from the attack early and Patel (0-12) took over. This was a good call and Patels extra pace and better lengths slowed the runs rate for the Witham openers and started to get momentum back to us.

Just before Agrawal finished his spell he found a really good one and took the important first wicket at 57-1.

The removal of the destructive opening batsman allowed Murray to turn to his slow bowling options. With the run rate slowing pressure allowed Smith to captilaise and with a direct hit got a smart run out for our second wicket.

1 ball after the number 3 was gone, trapped by Coppin LBW for a golden duck. 65-3, momentum back with the green. It's fair to say this exposed the inexperienced underbelly of the Witham line up.

Team top wicket taker Coppin (2-35) bowled a lovely controlled 11 over spell along side Ratnayake (3-23) who took his best figures for EAG as the young Witham batsman struggled to generate their own power and get away the slow bowling.

These wickets included a good return catch from Ratnayaka and a diving catch for Polley at square leg.

These good spells from the 2 spinners took Witham to 123-7 after 31 overs, leaving us in a position to attack.

Murray decided that he would have another go at the stubborn tail and it worked, to quote Ben Stokes he feasted on Rabbit pie, as his stright slow dobblers picked up 3-19 from 3.4 overs.

For those of you not old enough to have seen Shane Warne in his prime, with his second wicket, Murray gave you a chance to relive a mirror image of the ball of the century. From round the wicket with an off cutter the ball pitched outside leg spun and took the bail off the left handers leg stump round his pads. Some might say genius, some might a dodgy patch on a div 9 wicket, but all can agree the ball was probably wasted on a Witham 4th VI number 9.

Collins (0-0) as last week proved he doesn't need a warm up to bowl. As require came on for 1 over and dutifully bowled a maiden, further proving how criminally underused he is in this eight ash green attack.

Having restricted Witham to 151 the Green were happy, on a good scoring pitch we knew the second half wouldn't be easy, but this was a gettable total. It had been one of those innings that looking at the figures the plaudits may go to the wrong bowlers. Everyone did their job well, but Patel coming on in over 5 and swinging the momentum in our favour and Argarwal taking the important wicket of the opposition captain were spells that changed the game but don't look as shiny on paper.

A shout out to Amos as well who worked hard behind the stumps as out 5th different keeper in 7 games did very well to get behind the ball standing up for long periods of a tough pitch.

Our second innings began cautiously, Polley (52) and Wyatt (48) an experienced pair saw off some good opening bowling from Witham and looked relatively unchallenged. As Witham rang the changes the batsmans upped the scoring, and there were wide smiles from the watching eight ash green players as they passed 50, then 100 and to 110-0 at drinks.

As we restarted it seemed nothing would change as Polley went Wyatt passed 114, a significant number for the pair as this was their combined ages and took them further past our best partnership of the season.

As Witham seemed to run out of ideas they brought their openers back but the extra pace did for Wyatt as he chipped the ball up to cover agonisingly short of 50 as he fell for 48. An wonderful partnership of 123 broken but with only 28 left to win, so was the back of this chase.

Amos' (0) looked like he wanted to get back for something that evening but his stay was short as first ball he wafted at a very wide one getting a small edge on it and and being caught behind. 123-2.

This brought in Smith (10*), coming off a accomplished innings last week put on a small but significant partnership with Polley as in this time he passed 50 for only the 2s second half century of the season. The excitement then seemed to get to Polley as he was the trapped LBW by the Witham opener he had seen off so easily early. A shame it couldn't carry his bat but a very good knock.

This allowed Patel (9) to join Smith, who was maybe off to the same place as Amos as he also didn't hold back on any shots. He smashed 2 boundaries off 7 balls before missing a straight one that he tried to hit into the Tescos carpark.

This allowed Collins (4*) to wait for his ball and hit the final boundary and winning runs of the match. A comprehensive 6 wicket win with 11 overs to spare.

POTM - Ratnayake had fantastic figures and was probably pick of the bowlers but as pointed out earlier, the success of the bowling was down to the whole attack functioning when they had to.

Therefore POTM was therefore between the 2 opening batsmen and with 1 passing 50 and the other falling agonisingly short, the award this week goes to Richard Polley for his 52 and diving catch at square leg.

Witham CC IV Batting
Player name RunsMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
3nb 16w 10b 1lb 
for 10 wickets
30
151 (38.4 overs)		     
Daniel Youngman b  D Agrawal 29 30 6 96.67
Ben Olive run out  (J Smith) 19 38 3 50.0
Karthik Sampath lbw  K Ratnayake 24 23 5 104.35
Mike Hayward lbw  L Coppin 0
Aarav Huroo b  L Coppin 18 19 2 1 94.74
Joshua Olive ct  K Ratnayake b K Ratnayake 5 21 23.81
Aaron Cox lbw  M Murray 11 50 2 22.00
Max Allen ct  R Polley b K Ratnayake 0 4 0
Tom Preston b  M Murray 1 20 5.00
Peter Preston Not Out  9 19 1 47.37
Daniel Cox b  M Murray 5 9 1 55.56

Eight Ash Green Cricket Club Two Counties 2nd XI (Saturday) Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Dev Agrawal5.0037137.007.40
Matt Murray5.4033311.005.82
Nitya Patel5.011200.002.40
Luke Coppin11.0335217.503.18
Krishantha Ratnayake11.052337.672.09
Sam Collins1.01000.000.00

Eight Ash Green Cricket Club Two Counties 2nd XI (Saturday) Batting
Player Name RMB4s6sSRCatchesStumpingsRun outs
extras
TOTAL :
2nb 23w 4b 1lb 
for 4 wickets
30
154		        
Richard Polley lbw  K Sampath 53 68 10 77.94 1
Duncan Wyatt ct  D Cox b K Sampath 48 82 9 58.54
Jack Smith Not Out  10 13 2 76.92
Connor Amos ct  D Youngman b K Sampath 0 1 0
Nitya Patel b  T Preston 9 7 2 128.57
Sam Collins Not Out  4 7 1 57.14
Matt Murray  
Luke Coppin  
Dev Agrawal  
Stuart Simpson  
Krishantha Ratnayake   1

Witham CC IV Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Tom Preston9.0042142.004.67
Karthik Sampath8.0045315.005.63
Joshua Olive4.002100.005.25
Aarav Huroo4.002100.005.25
Aaron Cox2.001100.005.50
Max Allen2.00900.004.50