Binfield Cricket Club's 3rd XI lost by a single wicket away at Waltham St Lawrence CC on Saturday 8 August 2026, bowled out for 138 in a Thames Valley Cricket League (TVCL) Division 6B fixture before defending it to the very last pair - Waltham St Lawrence getting home at 140 for 9 only after an unbroken 26-run stand for the tenth wicket.

One wicket. In the end the whole long, hot afternoon at Waltham St Lawrence came down to a single wicket, and it was Binfield who finished on the wrong side of it - beaten by the barest margin the game allows, and desperately unlucky to be beaten at all.

It might so easily have been a rout the other way, for Binfield's innings was in genuine trouble almost from the start. Waltham's opening bowler Najeeb Ahmad ran through the top order with the new ball, and at the heart of it came a single, devastating over: two wickets in it, Harry Jones and Carter Daines both bowled, Binfield slumping from 36 for 2 to 36 for 4 without a run added. When Jakob Hinton went at 65 for 7, still short of three figures, a total of any dignity looked a long way off. Ahmad finished with 4 for 24 from his eight overs, three of Waltham's runs to a maiden.

That Binfield reached 138 at all was down to Jack Beaven and Mehul Garg. Their 39 for the eighth wicket was the innings' largest stand and much its most important, a patient, boundary-flecked rebuild from the wreckage of 65 for 7 - Beaven making 30 from 43 balls with five fours, Garg an unbeaten-looking 34 from 49 that carried the tail, two sixes and three fours in it. Garg was last out with the total on 138; it did not feel nearly enough.

And yet how very nearly it was. Binfield's bowlers turned 138 into a contest that lasted to the final pair. Bryn Davies, the captain, took 3 for 28 and Jack Beaven - a fine all-round afternoon - added 3 for 22, and when Waltham lurched from 114 for 6 to 114 for 9, three wickets tumbling in the space of five deliveries without a run scored, Binfield were a single wicket from one of the great smash-and-grab wins. The worm bears out how close it all was: for the first twenty overs the two lines were locked together almost run-for-run, a genuinely tight, low-scoring affair rather than either side pulling away.

It was not to be. Sami Awan and Naveed Asghar, Waltham's last pair, kept their heads and their bats straight, adding an unbroken 26 to steal home at 140 for 9. Asghar finished 17 not out, Awan 6 not out, and a Binfield side that had been beaten out of sight at 65 for 7 was left to rue the two runs and one wicket that would have turned an honourable defeat into a famous victory.

The 3rd XI stay third in Division 6B on 244 points, well in the mix behind Calcot, and there is no disgrace whatever in a one-wicket loss defended to the death. Warm words too for Waltham's captain Saad Jaffary, whose 44 and 2 for 21 did much to keep his side in it. A cruel way to lose, and a gallant one.