Binfield Cricket Club's 6th XI won a friendly by 195 runs at Desborough College on Saturday 25 July 2026, Jishnu Grandhi's unbeaten 91 from 47 balls hauling the innings from 100 for 7 to 244 all out before Jacob Whiddett's 5 for 7 helped bowl Holyport CC out for 49.

Do not be fooled by the gentle word 'friendly'. Binfield's 6th XI won the toss at Desborough College, chose to bat, and promptly found themselves in a good deal of bother - 100 for 7, seven wickets down, and an afternoon that looked like ending early and quietly. What happened next was one of the innings of the season.

Jishnu Grandhi came in at the fall of the seventh wicket and made 91 not out from 47 deliveries. Eighteen fours. A strike rate of 193. Seventy-two of his runs came in boundaries, and he was still there, unbeaten, when the last wicket fell at 244. With Ollie Holden - whose own 24 was a model of good sense - he added 113 for the eighth wicket, and between them the last three wickets contributed 144 of the innings' 244 runs. I say, that is a rescue and a half.

There had been substance earlier, too: Charlie Miles and Keegan Barretto opened with 56 together, Miles making a patient 22 from 44 balls and Barretto 21, while Tatiana Sumares' brisk 16 from 15 kept things moving before the middle order came unstuck. Holyport had figures that deserved better than the scoreboard gave them - Nathaniel Denholm took 3 for 16 and Joseph Talbot 2 for 11 from four parsimonious overs - but twenty-six wides and six no-balls between the attack gave Binfield thirty-two runs that no batter had to earn.

Then the reply, and it was over almost before it started. Phebe Salter and Zoe Docherty opened the bowling, Holyport slipped to 22 for 3, and from there the innings simply fell over. Four wickets - the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh - all went down at the identical score of 31, and the whole thing was done inside seventeen overs for 49. Ammad Ahmad top-scored with 15 and looked much the most assured of them; on another day, with a little support, that innings would have been the making of a total.

Jacob Whiddett's 5 for 7 was the pick of it - figures that look like a misprint until you see the collapse they describe. It is worth noting, too, that Binfield's wickets that afternoon were taken by an attack in which Salter, Docherty and Katy Slaughter all bowled, in a side captained by Docherty with Barretto keeping wicket. A fine advert for what a club 6th XI can be. It sends everyone home wreathed in smiles.