Binfield Cricket Club's 3rd XI lost by 22 runs to Reading CC's 3rd XI at Waltham St Lawrence on Saturday 1 August 2026, a Thames Valley Cricket League (TVCL) Division 6B fixture in which Binfield were 165 for 9 chasing 260 before Matt Hayman's 51 from 30 balls and Luke Taylor's unbeaten 47 added 72 for the tenth wicket and very nearly stole the whole afternoon.

Well I never - a last-wicket stand of 72 in a run chase, and it still was not quite enough. There are defeats that read as a thumping and defeats that read, on the card at least, as very nearly a heist. This one, my word, was firmly the second kind.

Reading won the toss, batted, and made 259 for 9 from their forty-five overs, built around Ankit Sharma's 80 from 89 balls and Osman Ali's 58 from 85. The pair added 84 for the second wicket - the biggest Reading stand of the day - and a further 56 for the third took the visitors to a commanding 206 for 3. Then Binfield squeezed. Jaden Slaughter's 7 overs cost only 24 and brought him three wickets at 3.43 an over, and with Harry Jones and Jack Beaven chipping in, Reading lost six wickets for 53 runs in the closing overs. It should be said that 37 of Reading's 259 were extras - runs Binfield's bowlers and keeper gave away, added to Reading's score - and twenty-one of those were byes. Hold that thought.

Binfield's reply began about as badly as a reply can. Hatib Khan bowled the third ball of the innings to Harry Jones and had Andy Mills leg-before three balls later, so that the scoreboard read nought for two before the first over was out. Jack Green and Rhys Hunt steadied things a little, and then Tom Phizackerley, the captain, played the innings the situation demanded - 47 from 40 balls with seven fours, at a strike rate of 117.5, dragging the chase back towards respectability almost single-handed.

The run chart makes a curious and rather painful point here. At twenty overs Binfield had 98 on the board to Reading's 93 at exactly the same stage - line for line, almost nothing in it - but Binfield had lost seven wickets to Reading's one. They were not, it should be said, ahead of the rate: 260 in 45 overs asks for something nearer 116 by then. The runs were roughly keeping pace; it was the batting that kept disappearing. When Bill Moffat was bowled at 165, Binfield were nine down and still needed 95.

And then the tenth wicket. Matt Hayman came in and hit 51 from 30 balls with eight fours, a strike rate of 170, while Luke Taylor - who had kept wicket all afternoon - held up the other end with an unbeaten 47 from 69 balls. Together they added 72 - nearly a third of Binfield's entire total, and much the biggest stand of the innings, though still short of the 84 Reading had put on for their second wicket. Hayman finally fell caught in the forty-third over, off Ankit Sharma of all people, with 23 still wanted and Binfield all out. Twenty-two runs short with the tenth wicket: it does not get much closer than that.

The margin bears one last look. Binfield's own extras bill was 37 against Reading's 19 - an eighteen-run swing against a side that lost by 22, and almost all of it byes. That is not to say the byes cost the match; it is to say that on a day when everything else came down to a single wicket, they very nearly did. The 3rd XI stay third in Division 6B on 234 points; Reading, sixth on 186, thoroughly earned this one. What a way to spend a Saturday.