Hambledon U9 took part in the first Petersfield Festival on Sunday August 29th. We had a squad of 10 boys - some being regular 'A' and 'B' team players, an U7 (James Bristowe) and also Lloyd Paxton playing his first ever games for Hambledon. Our first game was against Petersfield 'A', who were probably one of the favourites in their own festival. Excellent fielding and bowling ensured we took plenty of wickets restricting them to 108 (each team starts on 100). We duly made the runs and full of confidence headed over for our next game against Purbrook. Purbrook batted first, scoring 125. This turned out to be a very close game, although at the start of the final over Purbrook were firm favourites as Hambledon needed at least 3 wickets and couldn't afford to concede any runs. We duly took the 3 wickets but fell short, losing by just 1 run. After a victory against Waterlooville in our next game we played Fareham, unbeaten winners of this season's U9 'B' league. A very close game came down to the final ball of the match with Hambledon batting and needing 3 runs to secure victory Joshua Wise steered the ball past cover to the boundary for 4. Our final group game was against Petersfield 'B' who gave us a tougher game than the 'A' making 135 with Lloyd Paxton taking his first wicket. Hambledon responded well with some good batting to win the game by over 30 runs.
We then had to wait for other games to be played to find out who we would play in the Cup final. Petersfield 'A' needed to beat Fareham to have a chance of progressing, and Purbrook played Petersfield 'B'. Fareham posted over 170 beating Petersfield by almost 20 runs, which meant we would play Purbrook in the Cup and Petersfield' A' played Fareham again to decide the Plate (Fareham winning this final).
Hambledon batted first but lost a few wickets at crucial times. Some fine hitting by Archie Bennett got us back on track. The score was 114 when Joshua and Cameron Clarke came to the wicket as the last pair. The final over of the innings was interrupted by rain, by which time the score was a respectable 127. We completed the final 2 balls after the shower adding 1 more run. More rain delayed the start of Purbrook's innings. Excellent bowling by Tom Stevens, Tom Bloomer, Matthew Houlberg and Thomas Robertson gave us early wickets which meant Purbrook took a few overs to get above their starting point of 100. Needing to score 14 runs from the final over proved too many for Purbrook and Hambledon took the Cup winning by 6 runs!
Hambledon squad: Archie Bennett, Thomas Bloomer, James Bristowe, Cameron Clarke, Matthew Houlberg, Edward Moger, Lloyd Paxton, Thomas Robertson, Thomas Stevens, Joshua Wise.
Well done boys!