Michelle Slaughter's unbeaten, run-a-ball 30 brought the target crashing down as Binfield Cricket Club's Women's 2nd XI won by nine wickets away at Emmbrook and Bearwood CC on Sunday 19 July in the Home Counties Women's Cricket League Division 3A, her clean hitting the perfect foil to captain Jessica Jackson's unbeaten 49 and 2 for 11, after debutant Sophie Murray's superb 3 for 11 had bowled the hosts out for 127.

A total of 127 is a very gettable thing when a captain leads from the front, and Jessica Jackson led hers quite splendidly. First, though, to the bowling, for Emmbrook and Bearwood won the toss and chose to bat on a breezy Sunday and were kept honest throughout - and there was a debut to savour. Sophie Murray marked her first outing in Binfield colours with a display of real promise, brilliant in the field and, as we shall shortly see, better still with the ball. She had willing accomplices all around her: Helen Turner struck early to remove the top order, Katy Slaughter took two through the middle, and Jackson herself weighed in with two of her own. Only the home captain Nicci De Bromhead, with a defiant 49, truly dug in; around her the innings slid inexorably to 127 for 9, the freshening breeze gifting a generous 31 wides to Binfield's cause along the way.

A word, though, in warm appreciation of Lisa Jones, who opened the bowling and gifted Binfield yet another run-evaporating spell - the batters managing only six runs off her - and by obvious common consensus the thriftiest bowler in the whole of the women's section.

And it was at the far end from Lisa Jones that all that accumulated frustration was finally cashed in. For while Jones bricked up one end and the runs dried to dust, the wickets began to tumble at the other - and nobody took fuller advantage than the debutante Sophie Murray. Wheeling away with a poise that quite belied a first appearance, she returned the excellent figures of three for 11 from her five overs, a maiden among them, at an economy of barely two an over. Three prize scalps they were, as well: the dangerous Nicci De Bromhead, bowled by a Murray delivery just as her defiant 49 threatened to carry Emmbrook to safety; Lucy Prismall, smartly caught by the ever-alert Jackson at slip; and Katleen Nixon, castled for good measure. Squeezed dry at one end by Jones and hustled into error at the other by Murray, the home side never once managed to get away.

The chase, in truth, was a far sterner examination than a nine-wicket margin might suggest, for this was a stubborn, sticky batting surface on which runs had to be prised out rather than freely taken. Jessica Jackson and Helen Turner applied themselves gamely but found the scoring desperately hard going: Turner ground her way to 11 at a strike rate of just 33, and Jackson - already the owner of two wickets and that sharp catch - battled watchfully to an unbeaten 49 that, for all its considerable worth in holding the innings together, came at a laboured 59 runs to the hundred balls. With both openers becalmed and the asking rate quietly creeping upward, Binfield rather needed someone to seize the afternoon by the scruff of the neck.

Jessica Jackson · 49* and 2-11

Enter Michelle Slaughter. Where others had squinted and prodded, she walked to the crease and, by all accounts, saw a beach ball. From the very first delivery she was in clean, ruthless, uncomplicated command, picking the gaps as though the tough surface simply did not apply to her - and in the space of a few overs the entire complexion of the innings was transformed. Boundaries began to flow where singles had been a struggle, and the current run rate, becalmed for so long beneath the rate required, surged clean past it. This was the innings that turned the match: an unbeaten 30 conjured from a wicket that had tied better-set batters in knots, every run a run a ball, a flawless strike rate of a hundred. Slaughter did not so much steer the chase home as accelerate it there, hauling Binfield's scoring rate up by the collar until a target that had begun to nag was suddenly no target at all. By the close she had carried her side to 130 for 1, nine wickets and an ocean of time to spare - and it was Slaughter, unquestionably, who had turned a hard-fought graft into a comfortable win: the thrilling foil to her captain's watchful calm.

It was a thoroughly professional away-day, and it keeps Binfield Cricket Club's Women's 2nd XI handily placed in fourth in Division 3A of the Home Counties Women's Cricket League, right in the thick of a congested top four. Elsewhere in the division that afternoon, Cookham Dean beat Maidenhead and Bray by seven wickets and Wokingham tied a remarkable game with Sonning, so every point earned is a point well earned. Warm applause, too, for Emmbrook and Bearwood and their captain Nicci De Bromhead, whose 49 so nearly gave her side a defendable total, and for umpire Lou Walker and scorer Anna Alborough who kept it all ticking along. My dear old things, a most satisfying way to spend a Sunday. Splendidly done.