Harlow's second indoor side finished their season with an outstanding second place finish to complement the Div One side league title winning campaign.

Grateful to Jack Sykes for the excellent end of season report below.

A tough division of 10 teams was what faced Harlow's division 2 side in the indoor league over the past winter. Whilst trying to get as many players of the club as possible a game it was decided to use different squads for our teams and that was managed well.

A strong start to the season started with wins against Ware and HECC, before we became unstuck against Stansted Hall, a narrow defeat of 9 runs!

We bounced back to defeat Abridge, a convincing win over Sawbridgeworth, a dominant performance over Watton At Stone before then facing a top of the table clash with Tewin. Simply they played better on the day, bowled a brilliant death over and we were narrowly defeated by 5 runs.

Further wins followed against Matching Green and Stocking Pelham to round off the season. Overall, we finished in an impressive 2nd place.

Opening pair of Callum Sykes and Harry Burton took apart bowlers during the powerplay overs and were sharpish to retire. Amir Farooq and Matt Fisk sured up the middle order for the bulk of the season with Amir blasting the ball to the back wall regularly for boundaries. Matt finding his inner T20 persona pulling out the paddle and reverse sweep to nerdle to ball around. Tyler Dobson came in at 5 most games and was able to show his great improvement with the bat providing crucial runs late on in the innings. Captain Jack Sykes often put himself at number 6, closing the innings with the mentality of scoring runs or getting out so the likes of Callum and Harry could return. His strike rate was always positive, coupled with a kamikaze attitude meant scores often reached above 170. A late introduction of Oliver Allen late in the season only strengthened the fire power of this teams batting as he was able to smash his way to runs quickly.

Our bowling and fielding unit ultimately won us games during the season with Tyler using his tweaks of pace to deceive batsmen. At the other end of the speed scale, Callum often beat the bat during the powerplay overs which allowed us to restrict teams putting pressure on that ever-growing run rate. 'Golden Arm' Amir was as clever as ever with his deceptively rapid yorkers crunching toes on a regular basis. Matt developed his control game on game and used his flight, turn and bounce forcing batsmen to try and hit over the top resulting in wickets!

Harry and Jack shared the gloves, and both performed superbly taking sharp catches, executing the final elements of run outs with a calm manner with the odd stumping thrown in for good measure too. A number of direct runouts allowed us to squeeze on teams and press run rates high.

It was a pleasure to captain the side and a huge well done to everyone that played during the year. Thanks go to Jake Messenger, Abi Farooq and Jon Allen for their cameo appearances.
Roll on to the Cup Competition.

Jack
Division 2 Skipper