Binfield Cricket Club's Midweek 2nd XI won by seven wickets at home at Waltham St Lawrence on Thursday 30 July 2026, a Bracknell Midweek Cricket League Division 3 fixture in which four run-outs and Taran Kiri's 3 for 9 dismissed Crowthorne & Crown Wood CC's Midweek Academy XI for 123 in 19.5 overs, before Adrian Millerick's 44 saw the reply home with 21 balls to spare.

I say, what a thoroughly well-run evening's cricket this was - and I use the word 'run' advisedly, because four Crowthorne batters were run out, which in a short-format evening game is very nearly a fielding side's entire theory of the universe proved correct in a single innings.

Binfield won the toss and chose to field, and Crowthorne & Crown Wood were bowled out for 123 in 19.5 overs. Taran Kiri's four overs cost just nine runs and brought three wickets - an economy of 2.25, meaning barely two runs an over came off him all evening, and by a distance the best figures on either side - while Ollie Brasier's four overs went for 19 and included a maiden, two wickets and a stumping by Carter Daines behind the stumps. But the story was in the field. Simon Cowley, Harry Jones, Matt Humphrey and Carter Daines each effected a run-out, accounting for Daniel Cartledge on 39, Benjamin Catlin, Jonny Mattey and Sam Mansfield: four of the ten wickets came without a bowler getting the credit at all.

The fall-of-wickets card tells the whole story in a single line. Callum Gibbings, who made a patient 24 from 34 balls, and Cartledge, who made 39 from 24 with six fours and a six, put on 55 for the third wicket to take Crowthorne from 32 for 2 to 87 - and then the innings simply stopped. Cartledge was run out by Cowley at 87, Gibbings was caught by Daines off Kiri at 87 as well, and by the time Alex Dennet fell at 99 the visitors had lost four wickets for twelve runs. From 87 for 2 with eight overs left, a total of 160 or so looked entirely reasonable; 123 was what they got.

One number does need saying plainly, because it is enormous. Of Crowthorne's 123, some 27 runs were extras - runs the fielding side gives away, added to the batting side's total - and 25 of those were wides bowled by Binfield. That is more than a fifth of the whole innings handed over for nothing. Crowthorne's own attack was scarcely better disciplined, giving Binfield 22 in reply, of which 18 were wides. On a warm midweek evening with a breeze about, both sets of bowlers found their radar hard to come by.

The chase cost only three wickets and took only 16.3 overs. Adrian Millerick was the anchor with 44 from 49 balls and seven fours, and he was there for the first two stands - 49 with Simon Cowley, who made a brisk 15 from 14, and then 39 with Carter Daines, whose 22 came from 23. When Millerick was bowled by Alex Dennet at 88 the game was already gone; Tony Smith finished unbeaten on 15 from 11 and Jaden Slaughter struck a six in an unbeaten 6 from two balls to settle it with 21 balls in hand. Noah Darby took two for Crowthorne and Dennet one; nobody else managed a breakthrough.

The two points keep the Midweek 2nd XI fourth in Division 3 on 18, a single point behind Hurst Rangers in third and two behind Emmbrook and Bearwood in second, with Crowthorne & Crown Wood seventh and Royal Ascot clear at the top. There is very little in it for third. A sharply fielded evening, then, and a thoroughly useful one. Very neatly done indeed.