Whitchurch Heath CC

🔢 Team News | Your four WHCC sides for tomorrow’s league fixtures! 👊

1st XI 🆚 Newbridge Cricket Club (A)

2nd XI 🆚 Abergavenny Cricket Club II (H)

3rd XI 🆚 Glangrwyney (H)

4th XI 🆚 Abergavenny IV (A)

Go well to all 44 involved - all support at the Hospital & School appreciated as always! ☀️

No Virtual Programme this week, but we’ve got you covered with a Who Am I? for some Friday fun! 🧐

Guess the WHCC player based off their senior league & cup Play Cricket stats. Let us know in the comments who you think this person is!

Answer will be revealed in due course! 👀

🔜 Another scorcher awaits - here’s a look ahead to Saturday’s league fixtures!

1st XI 🆚 Newbridge (A)

2nd XI 🆚 Abergavenny Cricket Club II (H)

3rd XI 🆚 Glangrwyney (H)

4th XI 🆚 Abergavenny IV (A)

Set for two great matches at the Hospital & School - come and show your support in the sun! ☀️

Great to welcome Paul Wood from sponsors Thomas H Wood Estate Agent to senior nets a few weeks ago! 🏏🏡

We gave Paul a look around our new artificial nets facility - safe to say he was very impressed with both the nets and the quality of training on show!

From all at WHCC, we’d like to extend a huge thank you to Paul & the Thomas H Wood team for the continued support since 2023.

You can read more about how Thomas H Wood have supported us over the years in the media articles below!

👉 https://www.wales247.co.uk/cardiff-estate-agent-helps-transform-training-facilities-at-local-cricket-club

👉 https://newsfromwales.co.uk/estate-agent-thomas-h-wood-supports-whitchurch-heath-cricket-club-with-major-training-facilities-upgrade/

👉 https://www.businessin.wales/thomas-h-wood-backs-whitchurch-heath-cricket-club-training-facilities-upgrade/

Well done to Katy May-Hill, our Performance of the Weekend winner! 🏆

Katy put in a fantastic all-round performance as our Women’s side won the Regional Final of the Softball Welsh Cup! 👏

Well done to all named in our Team of the Week, too! Some fantastic showings across the weekend! 👊

Some great shots of the 4th XI in action on Saturday against Sudbrook Cricket Club at the School. Huge thanks to our very own Ranajoy Ghosh (Stories-By-Joy) for getting his camera out and taking these!

Despite some promising spells with the ball and a disciplined fielding performance in the heat, the 4th XI fell short in the run chase.

Special mentions to youngsters Evan White & Charley Dobson who bowled well and have clearly been putting in the work at our new nets facility!

Following on from Friday night's Welsh Cup triumph for the Women’s Softball team, attention turned to league action as our four senior sides took to the field on another scorcher of a Saturday.

The 1st XI were at home for a second week in a row, looking to get back to winning ways against Llandaff II following last week’s nail-biting defeat to Newport II.

Captain Carey won the toss and elected to bowl first. Taking the new ball himself, he had a wicket with the third ball of the match, removing Llandaff’s opener LBW for a duck.

Melbourne-bound Josh Sinclair took the new ball from the bottom end and had an early wicket for himself – a caught and bowled to reduce Llandaff to 3-2.

Some strong hits from their Number 4 briefly put us on the back foot before Jack Walklett forced him into a mistake with his innings ending thanks to a catch from Lewis.

Carey had two more wickets towards the back end of his 9 over spell, finishing with fine figures of 3-18, helping reduce Llandaff to 52-5.

Jack had a second wicket for himself soon after to round off another impressive, economical spell of 2-17.

From 60-6, Llandaff recovered a little bit towards the 100 mark before Josh Masih struck with two wickets – one bowled and the other safely taken by Charlie Barnett.

A run-out and a wicket for Richard O’Grady saw the innings fade away quickly – the opposition all out for 108 inside 36 overs.
The chase was fairly straight forward despite losing wickets with the score on 18 and 41.

Opener Richard O’Grady was striking the ball nicely and made batting look incredibly easy.

He breezed to 65* off 76 balls – a knock which included 11 fours and 2 sixes.

Keeping him company was Lewis Maidment who notched up 17* with three boundaries as we cruised to an 8 wicket victory with almost 20 overs to spare.

20 points in the bag and three weeks to go. We sit top of the table but it’s all still very tight so plenty of work to do, but at least it’s in our control. Next up is Newbridge away on Saturday.

The 2nd XI were away to Pentyrch II, looking to build on the impressive season.

We lost the toss but were more than happy to be asked to bat first.
The opening pair of Kim Swain and Tom Morgan shared 98 for the first wicket, before Kim was the first of three WHCC batters to be caught trying to whack their young leg-spinner.

A minor slip to 141-3 off 27 overs but Tom Morgan remained stoic throughout, batting well for his 70 off 90 balls.

His innings included 10 boundaries and departing with the score on 189-4 off 32 overs, we had a fantastic platform for the rest of the batting line-up.

Ioan Richards (40*) and Stuart Grimmond (26*) did well through the remaining overs of accurate bowling, to see us close the innings on an impressive 234-4.

Nauman Shafiq was on form with the new ball with the pitch offering some uneven bounce.

He took 3 early wickets in his lively 5 over spell which saw quite a few balls pop up off a length and hit into the hands of the grateful WHCC fielders.

Pentyrch though were up with the required run rate through to the first of two drinks breaks.

A lovely bit of off-spin bowling from Joe Rowthorn saw their main man caught at slip by Reynolds to take the score to 74-4 and put us well on top.

Playing just his second game of senior cricket, U15s Liam Scourfield was on to bowl his off spin.

After an over to settle his nerves and be told he could bowl from the crease line and not the stumps, he quickly found his feet.

His first wicket saw a length ball again pop up on the batsman, and was safely pouched by Grimmond behind the stumps. An over later, Liam had two in two balls with a catch off his own bowling followed by a perfect off spinner’s delivery, starting outside off before cutting back in through the gate to take middle stump.

Liam picked up his 4th wicket in his final over thanks to a catch from Kim Swain at mid-off marking the end of a very impressive 2nd XI debut.

Also making their 2nd XI debut was another youngster, Isaac Williams. He was bowling with good pace, and got his reward when a faint edge was taken by Grimmond standing up to the stumps.

With Pentyrch 9 down for 143, it was left to Danny Berkley to take the final wicket, bowled, sealing a 91 run win and 20 points in the bag.

Promotion remains theoretically possible but would involve us winning all three games and quite a few other results going our way. Regardless, it’s been an enjoyable season and next up is Abergavenny II who top the league so let’s see what we can do there.

Will Milburn’s 3rd XI were away to Rogerstone II where we lost the toss and were asked to field first.

Richard Hopcraft was on the money with the new ball, tearing through the opposition top order with three early wickets.

He clean bowled the opener for 1 before having their Number 3 caught by Will and their captain taken by Matt Price behind the stumps.

Owen Hopkins shared the new ball with Hopcraft and had two wickets of his own, one caught by Shazaib and the other by Will.

All of this had led to Rogerstone being reduced to 50-5.

Resistance was found in the middle order with their Number 6 scoring 43 before a third catch for Milburn off Bibin’s bowling got us the breakthrough.

Rogerstone’s tail did wag, although Wagg himself scored 3, one of two wickets for Umar Butt’s spin with the innings closing on 153-9 off the 40 overs.

In reply, we slipped to 33-2 before Matt Vanos and Bibin Biju shared a 50 run partnership for the 3rd wicket before Matt was bowled for 17.

This started a bit of a collapse as we fell to 104-6 which included the wicket of Bibin who had looked in top form for his 39 which included 9 boundaries.

With 50 still to win, Owen Hopkins and Umar Butt took us a good chunk of the way there.

Owen fell with 24 needed and we lost another wicket with 10 still needed to win.

8 wickets down, Umar at the crease had a very clear message to Matt Price who came to join him. “Price, don’t play any shots.”

The message worked with Umar knocking off the remaining runs himself, finishing 23* and seeing us home to a 2 wicket victory with a staggering 12 overs to spare. Those 3rd XI guys don’t hang around!

In our final match of the weekend round-up, the 4th XI were at home taking on Sudbrook III and it was the opposition who won the toss and elected to bat first.

There was a customary early wicket for Alun Jones, closely followed by one for young gun Evan White.

At 90-4 we had started the first half of the bowling innings well with wickets for George Milburn and Aled Grant.

Sudbrook though had batting right the way down their scorecard with Batters 8 and 9 both reaching 30*.

An impressive 207-7 was the final score we would be required to chase down.

Aled Grant struck 4 early boundaries opening the batting before departing for 19.

Irtiza was the star performer once again for us with the bat. He made 42 with five fours and a six but when he was out, the innings went south rather quickly.

Cian Davies and Alun Jones helped us secure a batting point as we passed 100, but it was defeat by 94 runs with 12 overs unused.

Three wins from four for our senior sides, and with Friday night's Welsh Cup triumph for the Women's Softball team added into the mix, it has been a very successful weekend for WHCC.

There is still an awful lot to play for across the club over the final few weeks of the season. Let's finish strong and set ourselves up for a Centenary year to remember.

Save the Date!

We’ll be holding our annual End of Season Awards Evening on the 16th October at Whitchurch Rugby Sports and Social Club! 🏆

A fantastic way to celebrate this year’s achievements across the Senior & Women’s sections of the club!

Food and Karaoke entertainment provided as part of the evening, with the latter being put on by club friend Alun Mitchell!

All are welcome, including partners, family, and friends. More details to follow in due course!