Binfield Cricket Club's 1st XI won by seven wickets at home to Kidmore End CC on Saturday 22 August 2026, knocking off 222 in a Thames Valley Cricket League (TVCL) Division 2A fixture after Michael Carson's 81 and an opening 78 from wicket-keeper James Muir had made light of the 221 Daniel Middleton's patient 74 had done most to build for the visitors.

Two hundred and twenty-two to win, and for a good while at Forest Road on Saturday it looked a total worth rather more than the sum of its parts. Then Michael Carson and James Muir set about it, and by the middle of the afternoon Binfield's 1st XI were home by seven wickets and inside thirty-four overs - a chase that never once broke into a sweat.

Kidmore End had won the toss and chosen to bat, and promptly lost both openers cheaply, Sanay Sadhwani and captain Juan Collison both back in the pavilion with only 32 on the board as Binfield's Tom Nower and Dylan Wood shared the new ball. What followed was a long, watchful rebuild around Daniel Middleton, whose 74 from 100 balls was the innings - an unhurried thing, seven fours and not a single blow over the ropes, that held the visitors together through a steady procession of departures at the other end. Joshua Finch gave him the best of the company with 39, the pair adding 72 for the sixth wicket, the largest stand of the innings.

Through all of it Binfield's captain Sam Kennett was a model of control: seven overs for 17 runs, two of them maidens - meaning not a run came off them - at under two and a half an over. Tom Nower and Dylan Wood took three wickets apiece and Thomas Williams another two, and when Kidmore End were finally bowled out for 221 in the fiftieth over it felt, for all Middleton's diligence, a good deal fewer than the platform had once promised. Binfield's bowling was not blameless - 27 of Kidmore End's runs came in wides handed over by the attack - but the wickets were shared and the chase, when it came, was a comfortable one.

The reply was serene. Harry Maxfield set the tone with 25 from 21 balls, four fours, before falling with 50 on the board - and then James Muir and Michael Carson simply took the game away. Their second-wicket stand was worth 145, the match-winning partnership by a distance: Carson the more fluent, 81 from 70 balls with fourteen fours and a six, striking at better than a run a ball; Muir the anchor, 78 from 96, nine fours, keeping wicket all afternoon and batting through very nearly the whole chase. Carson went at 195, Muir soon after for 78, and Chris Morgan (10 not out) and captain Sam Kennett (4 not out) saw off the rest.

There was never a wobble to speak of. Binfield's chase moved ahead of the required rate early and stayed there, the 145 stand turning an examination into a procession, and the winning runs arrived with the best part of sixteen overs unused. The Kidmore End attack gave Binfield 24 extras of their own - the runs a fielding side hands over in wides, no-balls and byes, added to the batting total - though on a day of 29 Binfield fours they were scarcely needed. The win leaves the 1st XI second in Division 2A on 306 points; Kidmore End, for whom Daniel Middleton and Joshua Finch batted so well, sit eighth. The whole afternoon was filmed, and the full match is embedded below. As convincing as a seven-wicket win ever looks.