NZ Over 70's v England Over 70's 16/8/2026 Silver Fern series Match 2 Report
The match was played at Farnham Royal cricket club in Buckinghamshire Another of England’s fabulously green cricket grounds turned into a barren lifeless paddock by their relentless summer. The hosts were amazing as usual and the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding dinner was perfection.
“England expects every man will do his duty” as Lord Nelson said, and when playing the England over 70’s team it seems every man can bat when required and every man bowl when needed. The only place you can seem to find chink in their armour is in their fielding at times.
The generous toss’s of some our county games were replaced by Roger’s first genuine correct calling of the coin. And so we did what most would do and batted first. Our openers Facoory and Penny put on 130 for the first wicket before Tony Penny fell 1 short of his 50. A solid opening partnership but the English bowling had been very tight and our run rate at 4.8 needed a boost to get to a reasonable total on that pitch.
Paul and Hamish Cochran pushed the rate up until Paul was out for another top score of 76 taking his tour tally to 427. With 1 century and 3 half centuries he has a heathy average of 61 with 1 match to go. Hamish duly added his 3rd half century of the tour to go with his 2 centuries. His total on tour so far is 465 runs at a great average of 93.
After Paul departed we struggled to build partnerships and impose any dominance on the English bowlers and once Hamish was out for 59 the tail was not able to add greatly to the total. We ended up on 242 for 7. A total perhaps a bit short of what we needed against the English batters.
England started off with a new opening pair and chasing a modest 5.4 runs per over. They made a steady start until the 10th over when Morris Dawson managed to get one to kick back and take out Jim Philips’s stumps for 26, lighting up the zinger stumps. The next man into the crease, Calvert barely missed a beat and he and Battersby put on 76 runs in 12 overs without taking too many risks until Roger Stachurski had him LBW in his first over.
Another opening into their batting order but then Derek Towe entered the fray. He played around for a time accumulating dot balls until Calvert was out to Bevin Guthrie and the Captain, John Evans, then came to the wicket. Evans and Towe, captain and vice captain, cruised to victory from there in an unbeaten 80 run partnership. Towards the end of his innings Towe scored off 19 deliveries from his last 21 balls and Evans went through a similar patch scoring off 10 consecutive deliveries at one point. Perhaps the greatest difference between their innings and ours was their intent to score runs. Well illustrated by that period between those 2 who scored off practically every ball for a 5 over spell.
A par score there was probably more like 270/280 and a challenging one closer to 300. England bowled some good spells in their innings to keep out total down with Staple bowling 7 overs taking no wickets for only 15 runs. Their player of the day was Nick Andrew’s whose 9 overs were a relatively costly 63 runs but he took out most of our firepower dismissing both openers and our numbers 4 and 5.
Our player of the day was Paul Facoory with his 76 and some determined fielding on what was another unpredictable outfield.
The third ODI is going to be played at High Wycombe on the 18 of August. England have rotated their players to give each of them at least 2 games so it will be a new combination again tomorrow. The series has been decided but it is far from over and as some have said, there’s no such thing as a dead rubber in cricket. A win in the third match would make it a very successful tour for the NZ team and we will be out there trying our best to make that a reality.
Chris East
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