Sports Report 22 May 2018

Despite the glorious weather we've been having, quite a few fixtures were cancelled over the weekend. This meant that none of the six Cricket matches with the Reading School went ahead. Much to Mr Howorth's disappointment, our boys spent Saturday morning playing some good friendly cricket on a training basis.

Cricket

U15 A v Oratory School

The U15A continued their fine run of form with an away victory over The Oratory. The home team elected to bat first and faced the new ball attack of Alex Bartlett and Joe Durcan. As usual, Bartlett found some early swing with the new ball and Durcan troubled the batsmen with his pace, but lacked accuracy at times. Bartlett, Willis and Redding all picked up wickets early on as Shiplake reduced The Oratory to 51-4 in the 10th over. Ben Willis in particular tested the batsmen with his left arm swing and Luke Theodorou's tight off spin bowling restricted the scoring rate. It was good to see The Oratory rally at this point and an excellent 5th wicket partnership saw them set a competitive target of 100 in 20 overs.

Ed Atkinson looked to be in a confident mood as he opened the batting again with Jack Livingstone-Smith. Jack's shot making was hampered by injury but he still performed well and helped to get Shiplake off to a positive start. When Livingstone-Smith fell, Alex Bartlett arrived at the crease and formed an excellent partnership with Atkinson, which saw Shiplake move steadily towards their target. The Oratory bowlers started and put real pressure on Shiplake's batsmen in the first 8 overs, but after that point there were some loose balls which allowed Shiplake to get ahead of the rate. Bartlett struck one particularly impressive extra cover drive for 6 from a no-ball and Atkinson played a couple of powerful pull shots in the 13th over which saw Shiplake move within range of the target. Bartlett fell shortly before they reached 100 which allowed Durcan the opportunity to knock off the winning runs. Shiplake won the game in the 16th over, by 8 wickets.

We are now looking forward to our county cup final match against Abingdon on Wednesday 23rd May.

Rounders

U18A v Reddam house

Last Wednesday, Reddam House made their way to Shiplake to play in the third match of the season. This was the second time that the Shiplake girls had played against Reddam House, and with a previous loss to the same team, the U18As knew that all was to play for in this match.

It was Shiplake’s turn to bat first. The girls recognised that previously, Reddam were strong with their fielding so the pressure was on for Shiplake to score as many rounders as possible. However, Reddam put up a strong fielding performance that meant that our girls were scoring more half rounders than full rounders. Despite this, they managed to bring it back in their second innings, both in fielding and in batting, with a strong performance from Issie who scored an excellent rounder. However, the team’s performance wasn’t enough to secure the win. The final score was 12 ½ rounders to 7 ½ rounders to Reddam. Well played to Rhian who got player of the match.