Another young Heywood third team took the field for their first home game of the season against what has become the norm, a more experienced side, this time in the form of Bury who won the toss and elected to bat first.
Heywood’s opening pair of Tom Pagett and Ethan Clarkson continued where they left off last week and had the Bury batsmen in trouble from the outset with some accurate bowling and three wickets from Clarkson reduced Bury to 20-3 in the 12th over and this became 40-4 in the 16th over when Tom Moulton took his first senior wicket for the club. Bury were in trouble and only opening batsman, A Raza, was able to keep the young Heywood team at bay. He was joined by A Ammar and the pair were forced to dig in and repair the damage as Heywood switched their bowlers around in search of a further breakthrough.
At 85-4 with only ten overs remaining, Heywood were hopeful of restricting Bury to something around 130 but unfortunately a combination of the tiring bowlers and fielders under the hot sun and the batsmen reaping the rewards of their earlier patience, meant that Bury were able to almost double their score in the last ten overs to finish on 163-4. Ethan Clarkson finished with the creditable figures of 3-40 off his ten overs.
This score was considered still to be readily achievable on a wicket that apart from the occasional low bounce held no terrors. Unfortunately Heywood got off to a bad start, losing the experienced Matt Hood in the second over and it was left to Matt Dearden and Dan Openshaw to build the innings. The young pair showed great patience and steadily started to build up the momentum with some good running between the wickets and they took the score up to 82 from 25 overs before they lost the wicket of Openshaw for 31 and then 4 runs later, his partner Dearden also fell for 31.
This started something of a procession and from being 82-1, six wickets fell for 23 runs in the space of 7 overs and all seemed lost at 105-7. However, the captain Lee Clarkson was having none of this and he mixed some lusty blows with calm manipulation of the strike and suddenly hopes of victory were raised again. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be as he fell attempting another big blow for an excellent 33, made at virtually run a ball. The team ultimately fell 15 runs short on 148-9.
Heywood will think that they had opportunities to win this game at various stages but once again, the young improving team applied themselves very well to compete with a more experienced team and will come out of this much the wiser for the experience.
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