| Third XI | Oakworth Cricket Club 2007 |
| The second season of Third XI proved another success with obvious improvement and a sixth place finish with 9 wins and 8 defeats. Come-back kid Darren Shields had moved on to Riddlesden for perhaps more regular opportunities and Jon Hollingsworth retained the captaincy. | |
 |
A first up match with a poor Pendle Forest llls brought Oaks a record 253-2 score-line which included 98 for Mark Pennington and 85 for Luke Taylor. The other lll team Glusburn brought us back to earth with a 4-wicket defeat albeit to a hugely more experienced side. Once again vast experience from Andy Hodgson and Dave Hall resulted in a six wicket loss to Cullingworth lls despite another 66 from 15 year old Taylor before his inevitable promotion to 2nd team cricket. If ever a match justified our decision to introduce lll team cricket the match at home to Sutton lls was it. Oaks had Luke Chapman grit it out for 55 and a late order flash from Greig Hudson for 35, a match we won by 97 runs against a similarly mixed age team. |
   |
The return at Cullingworth was also lost
by just 2 wickets but it signalled the arrival of
Rick "Radar" Linden
to the Oakworth scene. He pocketed 7-65. Two weeks later
Greig Hudson
helped Oaks defend an 80 score by 1 run with an incredible 8-15 against Denholme
lls.
Once most of the rain (and there was a lot) got out of the way our young XI found better consistency with five wins in the last 8 matches. A fine 46 from Linden helped us overcome Cononley lls and then Danny Aspinall with 53 and James Carnegie with 4-30 eased us to a repeat 1 run win against a sporting Denholme, who had Tom Greenwood in top form with 52 and 5-28. Then it was Riddlesden's turn to feel the power, this time from Brannan Lawn as Lee Hollingsworth guided him with lots of strike and chat to a fabulous 102.There was some penetrative bowling late season from Ollie Stell with 4-fors against both Cononley and Skipton CI lls. So wherever you looked there were young cricketers making strides forward and all were backed massively by skipper Jon Hollingsworth. Jon too had a good year as leading batsman with 296 runs and giving up the gloves to allow Hannah Ellis to take 14 victims in the year for our strong crop of bowlers. All-in-all 8 batsmen made over 100 runs whilst the biggest disappointment was the failure of Gordon Ingham to build on his potential. Linden, Hudson and Stell led the bowling attack which did well although we now need to see more wickets from Michael Clegg and Danny Aspinall and provide more opportunity for the under-rated James Longbottom. Overall batting and bowling team stats improved at both and home and away. What more cold we ask for?
|
| So what does 2008 hold in store? First of all we continue to hope that the Bronte Fields facilities will be uprated by the Council with more consistent grass cutting operations. For the players Linden, Stell, Aspinall, Ingham, Adam Smith, Carnegie and Ellis will all need to push there stats yet higher for there will be strong challenges for places from the senior ranks but also from Greig Hudson, Luke Chapman, Ben Pursey, Marshall Pedder, Jack Davison, Lewis Wrathall, Ben Fothergill, George Ingham, etc etc, etc etc........ | |