The Jesters made their second trip of the season to Ilkley, this time to defend our title in the Olicanians annual bank holiday Twenty/20 competition.
6 Jesters converged on the Generous Pioneer in Burley-in-Wharfedale & had to wait for them to open at 12pm before taking advantage of their 2 for £10 offer. So it was a swift lunch & then on to the ground to catch the end of the 1^st semi-final between the host club & Aire-Wharfe 1^st division league leaders Burley-in-Wharfedale. The host club managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory leaving Burley to “rest up” & await the winner of the 2^nd game.
The skipper had assembled a star studded side this year including, from Otley  debutant Aire-Wharfe Joe Lumb skipper Josh Atkinson before heading off for his annual visit to Wembley (for the rugby league challenge cup final) & had thought that, unusually the planning for this day had gone very smoothly. Sure enough while driving down to the ground we received a text from 1 player (currently playing at the Floppyfoot club) saying he could not make it. Luckily our Otley contingent awakened team mate Andrew Rhodes who kindly agreed to turn out at short notice.
We batted 1^st against the up & coming young Ben Rhydding team & performed pretty poorly on a slightly 2 paced pitch & did not even manage to bat out the overs. But with a powerful bowling line up against them the Ben Rhydding youngsters struggled to score runs & eventually started loosing their wickets as they tried to increase the tempo.
It was a quick turnaround for us & another poorish batting performance saved only by an aggressive knock by Stu Hudson, getting us up to a total that was certainly defendable with our bowling resources.
Burley however are not currently favourites to do the Aire-Wharfe double for no reason & set off at a blistering pace, taking full advantage of the 6 over power play. The early introduction of Townville pace bowler Greig Batty provided a “fiery” encounter between him & the Burley batsman that everybody except the umpires seemed to enjoy. For the 2^nd time in 3 years we were unable to dismiss Burley “stalwart” Richard Brook who again played a tremendous innings & took his side to a comfortable & deserved victory. In future I think we need to adopt the Real Madrid approach & get Richard to play for us instead of against us!

Catching competition update:- RL-5, DRB-2, Scottie-2, Hill tag team-2, Ives-1