Binfield Cricket Club's 4th XI lost by two wickets away at Pinkneys Green CC on Saturday 25 July 2026, defending a modest 156 deep into the fortieth over of a Thames Valley Cricket League (TVCL) Division 8B fixture before Pinkneys Green's 2nd XI got home on 160 for 8 with three balls to spare. Taran Kiri top-scored with 31.

One hundred and fifty-six is not a total you would choose to defend, and for very nearly forty overs Binfield's 4th XI made it look like quite enough. That they eventually lost by two wickets, with three balls of the match remaining, is the sort of afternoon that stays with a side rather longer than a comfortable defeat ever would.

The batting had been a stop-start business. Put in by Pinkneys Green, Binfield never built anything: 21 for 1, then two wickets at 35 without a run between them, then two more at 89 in the same fashion. Chris White's 22 and a 35-run stand with Taran Kiri was the only sustained partnership of the innings. Kiri himself was the one man who properly counter-attacked, 31 from 25 balls with six fours, and Abinandan Venkatraman hit both of the innings' only sixes in a 15-ball 21. All out for 156 with more than ten overs unused.

Arthur Fenna was the chief destroyer: four wickets from just five overs, the most incisive spell of the innings even though it was also the most expensive. Chandra Bandla was the thriftiest, finishing the innings with the last wicket, and Naresh Kumar took two. It was, in truth, a good bowling performance rather than a bad batting one - though two wicket-maiden stands in a single innings is a hard way to build a score.

And then the defence, which was magnificent. Pinkneys Green were 28 for 2 early, recovered through James Hemmings' 25 and a solid 40 from Sridhar Balachandar, and then wobbled again - 95 for 5 and the game genuinely in the balance. Imran Tariq's 30 was the innings that mattered, but even after him Binfield kept coming: 143 for 6, 146 for 7, 148 for 8, and suddenly the home side needed nine more with two wickets standing.

They got them, Zach Abraham and Chandra Bandla seeing it through with three balls unused. Binfield's bowlers had conceded fourteen extras across the chase to the seven their own innings received, and in a finish that tight one does not have to look very hard at a scorecard to wonder about it. Goodness gracious me, the fine margins of Division 8B.

Ten points, then, rather than none, and the 4th XI remain second in the table on 223 - a position that says a great deal more about their season than one desperately narrow Saturday does. Pinkneys Green earned every one of their twenty-two. It is a long road home from Pinkneys Green when you lose like that, but not a discouraging one.