Binfield Cricket Club's Women's 2nd XI lost by eight wickets away at Cookham Dean CC on Sunday 16 August 2026, bowled out for 98 in a Home Counties Women's Cricket League (HCWCL) Division 3A fixture in which only 66 of those runs came off the bat, before Caitlin Cairns and Jemima Smith knocked off the target unbeaten together.

Ninety-eight all out is a modest total in anybody's book, but the number underneath it is the one that really explains this afternoon. Cookham Dean's bowlers gave Binfield 32 extras - 25 of them wides, runs the fielding side concedes and the batting side is handed without a stroke being played - which means Binfield's batters themselves contributed only 66. A side that is given nearly a third of its score for nothing and still cannot pass a hundred has had a difficult day with the bat.

It was difficult from early on. Jessica Jackson began brightly enough, striking two fours off Shreya Musaloj in the sixth over before edging behind for 9, and once Monika Nicholls was bowled and Jackie Rawes run out without scoring, Binfield were 38 for 3 inside eleven overs. Helen Turner then dug in for the longest innings anyone in a Binfield shirt played all day - 14 runs from 41 balls, a strike rate of 34, which is pure occupation rather than accumulation - until Caitlin Cairns bowled her in the fifteenth with the score at 49 for 4.

Lisa Jones top-scored with 17 from 35 and added 18 with Gosia Hopley for the sixth wicket, and while the two of them were together a competitive total was still in prospect. It disappeared in seven deliveries. Jones was bowled by Alex Delahaye at the end of the twentieth over, and Freya Hayden then removed Hopley and Maisie Rawes inside the next - three wickets in the space of seven balls, 73 for 6 becoming 77 for 8, and the innings effectively over.

That it reached 98 at all was down to the youngest and freshest partnership of the day. Olivia Ternent, batting at eight, made 12 not out from ten balls with three fours - a quarter of the whole innings' boundary count from one small cameo - and with Juliette Andrews added 21 for the last wicket, comfortably the biggest stand Binfield managed and better than a fifth of the total. Andrews was bowled by Delahaye in the twenty-fourth over to end it, leaving Ternent stranded and unbeaten. Cookham Dean's attack had been miserly throughout: Hayden took 2 for 8 from four overs and Cairns 2 for 10 from five, both conceding exactly two runs an over.

Binfield's own bowling, it should be said clearly, was not the problem. Jackson struck in the second over to have Freya Hayden bowled with the score at 8, and Andrews had Shreya Musaloj caught by Jackie Rawes in the eleventh to leave Cookham Dean 38 for 2 with sixty still required. Andrews finished with 1 for 9 at three runs an over, Ternent conceded ten from three overs with a maiden - an over that cost nothing - and Binfield's bowlers as a unit sent down only seven wides all innings, against the 25 Binfield had been handed earlier in the day. But Caitlin Cairns, unbeaten on 40 from 55 balls, and Jemima Smith, 35 from 28 with six fours, simply batted through - an unbroken third-wicket stand of 64 that finished the match with eight wickets and nineteen balls in hand.

Cookham Dean take 20 points and Binfield 2, which leaves the Women's 2nd XI fourth of six in HCWCL Division 3A on 78 points, with Cookham Dean third on 106. Luke Cairns and Chris Jones stood as umpires, Tina Davis and Stephen Nower kept the book. Sixty-six runs off the bat will not win many games of cricket - but Ternent's ten-ball cameo and a last-wicket stand that outscored every other partnership in the innings are the sort of small defiance a side takes into the next one.