Petersfield entered the Portsmouth tournament for the second successive year with a similar team to last year when they finished 5th in this tournament.
Our extra 12 months of training and experience showed when we despatched both Hursley Park and Portsmouth B in our opening two games during which we only lost 2 wickets. We knew that we could perform better and a very close game with Lock’s Heath which would decide the group winners followed. Batting 1st Petersfield scored 38 for 2 with contributions from every player and 4’s for Katie Nolan, Jess and Leah. In reply Lock’s Heath were always behind the run rate and at the halfway point only had 7 runs on the board for the loss of 3 wickets. However a strong fight back ensued leaving Lock’s Heath only requiring 3 runs from the final over. New Captain for the season, Jess, asked Molly to bowl and after 5 balls only 1 run had been scored and things were looking good however a stop on the boundary from Katherine and a scrambled 2 runs from the final ball ensured that this game finished as a tie. As both teams had identical points at the top of the group a bowl off then took place to decide the group winners with Lock’s Heath coming out on top.
This result saw us play our nemesis and the home side Portsmouth A in our semi-final. A brilliant start saw Portsmouth 3 wickets down after just 2.1 overs and the Portsmouth coach had his head in his hands however sensible batting saw Portsmouth recover slightly to score 43 for 3 leaving us with an achievable target to win. A 4 from the second ball of our innings and 8 runs from the 1st over gave us hope however this proved to be the high point of our run chase as Portsmouth ripped through our batting line up with some quality pace bowling leaving us well short and 10 wickets down at the end. A special mention should go to Georgie from Portsmouth who took 6 of our wickets in a great spell of fast bowling.
Could Petersfield recover to play Fair Oak in the 3rd place play off? Batting 1st we improved throughout our innings which included a special straight 6 from Lorna which earnt the team ice creams from the coach to finish on 37 for 4. Thankfully the girls put in their best bowling performance of the tournament to put pressure on Fair Oak but a another straight 6 from the opposition put them back on course until Katherine took 2 wickets in the penultimate over to leave Fair Oak 4 runs short on 33 for 4 and Petersfield with the Bronze medal.
The top batter for the day was once again Katie with an impressive 32 runs and she was supported well by the ever improving Lorna with 23 runs. The bowling was well lead once again by Molly with Leah and Emma having an uncanny knack of taking regular wickets with 9 wickets on the day between them. Everyone fielded bravely with Jess proving to be a superb captain throughout the day.
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