Leaders Wycombe must guard against complacency
8:40am Friday 22nd June 2012 in Sport By Alan Feldberg
Wycombe have been unbeatable so far this year
YOU would expect second-from-bottom Burnham CC to be more afraid of High Wycombe CC than the other way around.
But the Home Counties Division One league leaders will welcome tomorrow’s visitors to London Road with a warning from their captain ringing in their ears.
Matthew Eyles said: “They’re a dangerous side. We’re playing at Wycombe so we’ve got to be confident.
“But they are probably the most dangerous side in the league. They can be very hot or very cold.”
Meanwhile, Eyles has praised the batsmen after Wycombe made it five wins in a row last weekend to move 29 points clear at the top of the Home Counties Division One table.
The defending champions beat Bishop’s Stortford by two wickets but captain Eyles admits it needed their best run chase of the season to do it.
He said: “At certain points in the game we didn’t look like we were going to win it, but we kept going for the win.
“We weren’t reckless but we were positive all the time and went for our shots even though we were losing wickets regularly.
“I think our approach surprised them, but as a captain it was very good to see.”
And Eyles would also have been delighted to see two of the teams youngest members guiding Wycombe over the line.
Chasing 230, a fluent 62 from James Benning plus 34 from David Cranfield-Thompson kept Wycombe just about in it, but with everyone else failing to build on starts and overs ticking away, they appeared to be one good innings short of victory.
Eyles said: “With five or six overs left we still needed about 35 runs. A run a ball on that wicket wasn’t easy, and we only had two or three wickets left.
“It was a difficult situation because of the conditions, but Sohail [Hussain] came in and played a little cameo and he and Ali [Birkby] took us over the line easily. I think we still had an over to spare.”
It hadn’t looked promising earlier in the day, when Eyles broke a habit this season by losing the toss.
Wycombe were asked to bowl first on a dry, slow pitch and might have expected to be chasing upwards of 270 runs.
Instead though, James Benning took three key wickets at key times to halt home momentum, before Birkby came in to clean up the tail with figures of 3-44.
If that made it a good day for Wycombe, news that Banbury, Welwyn Garden City, Henley and Harpenden all failed to win turned it into a potentially pivotal one.
Eyles said: “A few results went our way and has given us a bit of a gap to mid-table, but there is still only one win between us and second and in this weather that’s not much. We can’t complain though.”
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