Tunnel Wash Burnside Premier Men played St Albans CC in the first round of the CMCA one day competition at Burnside Park on Saturday the 20th December 2025, the two clubs play for the Boock-Sharp trophy named after St Albans CC legend Stephen Boock ONZM and the late Peter Sharp from BWCUCC.
It has been some years since the club has hosted the fixture and there was some uncertainty during the week it that it would be played at Burnside Park, however that was all settle by the middle of the week and even better it was confirmed to have Stephen Boock attend to present the trophy.
On to the match where was affected by a ground delay and play got underway at 11.45am without a reduction of overs. Matt Hay won the toss and invited St Albans to bat first and after losing a couple of wickets they formed some excellent middle order partnerships with Matthias Paltridge 82, Tom Flavell 43, and captain Lachies Harper 55 saw them to 232/7 after 45 when they came off for rain which ended of their innings and lunch was taken. We lost about an hour of play before the sun came out and were able to resume play at 2:45pm with a reduce overs and DLS adjusted target of 242 from 45 overs for BWCUCC’s innings.
Tom Turner got off to a blistering start 4 x 4s and 2 x 6s however St Albans CC were able to get wickets and break partnerships with Janett, Gibb and Ben Wright out at 100/4 some work in the middle overs was need and a 41 run partnership with David Zohrab 18 and Matt Hay 51 put us back on track but with scoreboard pressure and the skies getting darker, Hay, Seeto and Matthew Lewis all sent back the pavilion saw a wonderful stand with Adam Winter clubbing 43* and Alex Tait 23* putting on a 59 run partnership in quick time to get us to the win with two wickets in hand.
As soon as the winning runs were hit there was no time to celebrate as a thunder storm came over the park as the players rushed to put covers on as the T20 semi-final was due to played the next day. (see video below)
Upstairs in the Dowling – Hasting lounge a supper was provided and due to the rain delays there was some doubt that Stephen Boock would be available for the presentation as he had prior family commitments, however this proved not to be the case and he was wonderfully generous with his time enthralling the room with a few cricket anecdotes and advice for today’s players and presenting the trophy to Matt Hay.
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