Braintree's U13's picked up their first win of the season with an 11-run victory at home to old foes Halstead.
With the pitch having taken some water over the weekend, the visitors won the toss and predictably put Braintree in and got an early breakthrough at the beginning of the 3rd over when Bertie Burnside chipped back to Harry Goodwin to leave the Dolphins on 11-1. However, despite some excellent bowling from the Halstead youngsters, it would be 17 overs and 120 runs before they managed another as Will sherry and Tyler Dyer dominated the Braintree innings. Both batsmen took time to get in and assess the tricky conditions but were particularly harsh on anything short and wide with Sherry in particular pulling the ball ferociously to the fence on more than one occasion. To add to that the pair ticked over the singles with relative ease as they put the fielding side under pressure until Sherry brough up his second half century of the season to follow up an excellent 33* for the 3rd XI the day before. He was asked to retire at this point which brought skipper Lucas Hale to the crease, but he perished without scoring in the pursuit of a maximum while Dyer finished on an excellent 39*
As always in these games, early wickets are the key and Hale delivered as he had Alfie Cook caught by Burnside for 0 from the 4th ball of the innings. This brought Harry Goodwin to the middle to join fellow District player Ollie Judge and they looked to take the attack to the Dolphins bowlers. They put on 48 in just 26 balls before a mix up between the two saw Judge run out for 10. Goodwin continued to look for boundaries but tried one too many big shot and could only sky the ball to mid-wicket where Hale took and excellent catch to give Burnside a deserved wicket. an excellent knock of 30 from 29 balls came to end and Braintree were back in the game. Kaylen White, probably the biggest hitter on show looked to get into his groove as he dispatched Corbyn MacLeod's first ball over cow for six but Braintree had an end to work at and soon started to get amongst the middle order. Henry Butler had Josh Grinonneau caught smartly by Will sherry at mid-on for 4 before MacLeod got his revenge, having white caught by Harrison McBride at short third man for 21 from just 16 balls. Bobby Joyce loook dangerous for a while until George Wedge, who came back superbly after a poor first over, had him caught behind to a very sharp catch by Jake Lee for 12. Tyler Dyer was back in the game shortly after as he took a simple return catch to dismiss Josh Jones for 4 and sharp work by Lucas Hale instigated the run out of Edward Stacey for 1 to leave the visitors 123-8 as their chase just ran out of steam at the end.
An excellent result for The Dolphins after a couple of narrow defeats gets their season up and running!