Binfield Cricket Club's Midweek 1st XI lost by five wickets away at Wokingham CC on Wednesday 29 July 2026, a twenty-over Bracknell Midweek Cricket League Division 1 fixture in which Binfield's 159 for 4 - built on Luke Taylor's 42 - was overhauled with three overs to spare after Anthony Clapham's 35 from 13 balls tore the chase open in the opening exchanges.

A twenty-over match can be decided in a single over, and this one very nearly was - not at the end, where the drama is supposed to live, but right at the start of the chase, when Anthony Clapham hit 35 from 13 balls and simply removed the equation from the board.

Binfield had batted first on a hot Wednesday evening at Wokingham and made a perfectly respectable 159 for 4. Luke Taylor was the mainstay with 42 from 40 balls and five fours, and he was involved in both of the innings' substantial partnerships - 54 for the second wicket with Rhys Hunt, then 53 for the third with Harry D'Amaro-Field, who made 30. Mehul Garg's unbeaten 13 came from nine balls at the death, and Carter Daines saw the innings out alongside him. Hugh Doyle, the Wokingham captain, was the pick of the home attack with three overs for 12 and a wicket.

That total was, however, propped up considerably by Wokingham's own generosity. Of Binfield's 159, fully 44 were extras - runs the fielding side gives away, added to the batting side's score - and 37 of those were wides. Binfield's bowlers were hardly models of accuracy themselves, conceding 26 extras including 22 wides in the reply, but a side that gives away 37 wides in twenty overs and still wins has considerable batting to fall back on.

Wokingham duly used it. By the end of the fifth over of the chase they had 71 on the board to Binfield's 38 at the same point - a gap of more than thirty runs opened in a quarter of an innings, almost all of it Clapham's, who struck five fours and two sixes at a strike rate of 269 before Ritesh Shetty had him caught by Oliver Lovegrove for 35. Matthew Keast's 26 from 16 kept the pressure on.

Rhys Hunt fought back magnificently, taking three wickets for 18 from his four overs at four and a half an over - by a distance the best figures on either side - to reduce Wokingham to 125 for 5 and give Binfield something to bowl at. But Iain Muirden, unbeaten on 23, and Andrew Lazenbury, 16 not out from nine balls, put on 38 without further loss to finish it in the seventeenth over. The Midweek 1st XI remain bottom of a tight six-team Division 1 on five points, with Wokingham third; there is still cricket to be played there. A long drive home, but not a long way off the pace.