GREAT Melton U11 completed their Terry Moore Trophy group matches with two resounding home victories over Horsford and Bradenham. In an excellent fielding performance few wides or no balls were bowled and nine wickets taken as Horsford were restricted to 257-9, a net score of only 212.

GREAT Melton U11 completed their Terry Moore Trophy group matches with two resounding home victories over Horsford and Bradenham.

In an excellent fielding performance few wides or no balls were bowled and nine wickets taken as Horsford were restricted to 257-9, a net score of only 212.

Rob Smith with three wickets for one run and Ben Carding with 2-9 from three overs were the pick of the bowlers but Craig Attewell (1-1-2-1), Ryan Howard (3-1-4-0), Matt Rennie (2-0-4-0), Alex Rennie (1-0-6-0) and Luke Marchant (3-0-23-2) all played their part in restricting the visitors. Joe Greenslade then hit 42 and Carding 15 as Melton totalled 309 for the loss of two wickets to accrue a net score of 299 and win by 87 runs.

Against Bradenham Melton's performance was not quite so convincing. Although the bowling was relatively straight the concentration levels in the field were not quite so high against a team with limited batting experience. Nevertheless Melton took 10 wickets.

Luke Marchant's two overs brought three wickets for no runs, there was a further three for Ben Carding (3-1-2-3), two for Rob Smith (3-0-6-2) and one apiece for Ryan Howard (2-0-4-1) and Matt Rennie (3-1-4-1) as Bradenham struggled to 226-10, a net score of 176.

The innings also included four stumpings by Joe Greenslade. With Melton starting with 200, it needed an extraordinarily poor batting performance for them to lose the game but, after Smith and Howard's partnership had taken the score to 227, second pair Matt Rennie and Lewis Chalcraft were out five times! Good batting by Alex Rennie (9), Ben Carding (13*) and Joe Greenslade (22no), however, saw Melton pass the 300 mark and, despite the fact that Bradenham picked up two more wickets, Melton reached 304-7 (269 net) to win comfortably by 93 runs.

With three wins and two defeats in their five matches, the U11 are likely to finish third in their six-team group.

After the first match defeat against Witchingham with a somewhat experimental team, the boys have grown in strength and confidence as the season has progressed and, if the Witchingham game had come later in the season, may have been able to qualify for the quarter-finals.