Binfield Cricket Club's Friendly XI won by 47 runs away at Chaddleworth CC on Sunday 16 August 2026, making 184 all out after Will Kings's 83 rebuilt an innings that had begun at a crawl, then bowling Chaddleworth out for 137 in seventeen overs with Mat Kings and Josh McFarlane taking five wickets for sixteen runs between them.

My dear old thing, here were two innings that could hardly have been shaped more differently, and they arrived at the same destination by opposite roads. Binfield began at a positive crawl and finished with 184; Chaddleworth began at a gallop and were all out for 137 with thirteen overs still in the bank. In between sat Will Kings, 83 from 79 balls, quietly making the difference.

The start was, it must be said, a most extraordinary thing to watch. Binfield had won the toss and chosen to bat, and after four overs they had precisely one run on the board. Charlie Miles was watchfulness itself - he took 22 deliveries over a single run before he was caught off Ben Barrett in the ninth over, and with Oli Bryant already gone for 8, Binfield were 17 for 2 and looking rather thin. Chaddleworth's opening pair of Ben Barrett and Eddie Campbell had bowled seven overs each with two maidens apiece - overs that cost nothing at all - going at under three runs an over between them; an economy rate of that order, in a game of this length, is close to a stranglehold.

Will Kings then set about undoing it, and did so without once resorting to the agricultural. Fifteen fours in his 83, and not a single ball hit over the rope all innings by anybody in a Binfield shirt - sixty of his runs came in boundaries along the ground. He was the constant in three successive stands of 39, 46 and 44, first with Mat Kings, then with Carter Daines, and finally with Rahul Gupta. Daines's contribution deserves its own moment: 19 runs from eight balls, four of them fours, a strike rate of 237 runs per hundred balls, which is not so much an innings as a small explosion.

It ended in the twenty-seventh over, and it very nearly ended everything. Kings was caught off Stephen Enever with the score at 146 for 5, and two balls later Aarush Cheeti was leg-before to the same bowler - two wickets in three deliveries, and a handsome position suddenly looking precarious at 148 for 6. Rahul Gupta's 20 and Harry Short's brisk 14 from ten balls saw Binfield through to 184 all out in the 32nd over, with Paul Edgington unbeaten at the other end. Enever finished with 4 wickets for 46, the best figures of the match on either side. Chaddleworth's bowlers also handed Binfield 16 extras - wides, no-balls and byes are runs the fielding side gives away and the batting side is awarded - which is a useful few percent of any total.

And then Chaddleworth's reply, which began with a wicket off the very first ball and 22 runs off the very first over, a combination one does not see every day. Stephen Enever was out first ball without scoring; Steve Turner responded by making 37 from 18 balls with seven fours and a six, and when Jack Barrett joined him the pair put on 75 for the second wicket in the space of six overs. That stand alone was better than half of everything Chaddleworth would score - 75 of their eventual 137 - and Barrett's own 40 from 29 included three sixes.

Break the stand and you break the innings, and so it proved. Binfield's Mat Kings and Josh McFarlane bowled two overs each, conceded eight runs each, took a maiden each and shared five wickets - figures of 3 for 8 and 2 for 8 that read almost like a misprint. Paul Edgington took 2 for 19 and Rahul Gupta 2 for 30, and from 75 for 2 Chaddleworth lost their last eight wickets for 62 runs, all out in seventeen overs. Binfield's own bowlers gave away just 8 extras, against the 16 Binfield had been given while batting. The run charts tell the whole story in two lines: Binfield's crept along the floor for nine overs and then climbed steadily for twenty-three, while Chaddleworth's shot upwards to 75 inside six overs and then went almost flat - 79, 82, 83 across the next three - and never recovered its legs. A thoroughly satisfactory afternoon's work.