Demotion confirmed for Old Bucks’ young guns

Old Buckenham cricket captain Terry Perry is looking on the bright side, despite Saturday’s six-wicket home loss against Diss confirming the side’s relegation, writes Hannah Dolman.

Their final match loss – the 12th of their 2018 campaign in the Cecil Amey Norfolk Cricket Alliance Premier Division – saw the team finish bottom of the league, meaning they will compete in Division One next summer.

But Perry thinks this is ‘not such a bad thing’ with the club rebuilding after a number of senior players moved on as well as being hit by injuries.

“It’s been a disappointing season,” he said. “You’ve got to take it on the chin though – we’re going down and that’s that.

“But we have to be positive about it.

“Going down a level does provide an opportunity for those young players to learn and develop.

“We can almost take a season to rebuild and prepare for life in the Premier Division.

“It’s not, necessarily, a bad thing.

“Of course we wanted to stay at this level but it’s happened now, so we want to turn our focus on getting straight back to the top level.”

Perry does not want to focus too much on a seasonal review, despite his side only managing three victories from 18 outings in this year’s competition.

“We fought the whole way to the end and we were never resigned to demotion,” Perry said.

“We had a young side this year and everyone tried their best, but it just wasn’t to be.

“Everyone is of course very disappointed about it at the moment because of the effort.

“But we ended up a team completely devoid of confidence and, when that happens, things just don’t seem to go your way.

“We weren’t unlucky as such, but it’s been a tough season for a lot of reasons.

“So we need to boost our mood and get ourselves back to a place where we believe we can win.

“We have a lot of talent and I do think we deserve to be in the top flight, but we obviously didn’t prove that this season.”

He said Saturday’s match could have ‘seen us score a few more runs’ but the damage was inflicted by two in-form batsmen from Diss.

“We came up against two batsmen that combined well and are both playing well anyway,” he said.

“And we found ourselves in trouble.

“We just couldn’t get them out – it’s a perfect example of how things don’t go your way when you’re at the bottom of the league.”

Old Bucks, unfortunately, had one more season-ending hurt to endure the following day, as they lost to North Runcton in the final of the Bob Carter Cup at their ground.

Batting first, only Robert Thurley (25) and Matthew Bint (18) were able to hit double figures as they stumbled to a underwhelming 83 all out in 32 overs.

In reply, North Runcton needed just 14 overs to catch the total, although Old Bucks did fight hard to pull off an unlikely victory, with the visitors losing five wickets.

Daniel Bint collected three of those wickets, for 30 runs, while Chris Howes took the other two for 19 runs.

But North Runcton still romped to a five-wicket win.