Crusaders Mid-Season Update

The Crusaders have had a mixed start to the season, with much of the early season being hampered by rain. A recent victory in the T20 Varsity against Oxford Authentics has been the highlight. Despite the weather, we gained useful experience against local club sides, such as Foxton Granta, as well as the RAF, MCC and the Free Foresters. A large squad this year meant there was a need to rotate the team, and so despite several excellent individual performances in these games we didn’t see the complete team performance we were hoping for and so the final results didn’t go our way.

In our first year in a new BUCS league, having been promoted last year, we faced some seriously strong competition. Nottingham Trent 1s, Nottingham 2s and Derby 1s all provided closely contested fixtures, but unfortunately, as a relatively inexperienced side, we were unable to get over the line in any of them despite getting ourselves into winning positions. The performances we were able to put in, though, stood us in good stead for our T20 against the Authentics, where a sensible batting display set up an exciting defence. A fantastic bowling and fielding performance gave us a win in our first of the 3 Varsity matches.

Unfortunately, 2 days later we could not follow suit and lost in the 50-over Varsity match at Arundel, where an important toss to win led to Oxford posting 294 after an excellent final 10 overs with the bat. The run chase proved too much for us and we fell short. Despite this, it was still a great day out and a fantastic experience for the team on a brilliant pitch in a stunning setting. This leaves a great weight of importance on the 3-day match occurring in July, as well as our final BUCS games against Loughborough and Coventry where we will have to fight to stay in the league. However, recent performances have shown that we are very capable of this and need to bring some of our recent form into the back end of our season post-exams.

Cameron Mitchell

Crusaders Captain 2022-23