SHARDLOW: Last four is a fantastic achievement (From Wiltshire Times)

SHARDLOW: Last four is a fantastic achievement

2:00pm Saturday 23rd June 2012 in Sport News

I’M ABSOLUTELY delighted with Sunday’s result.

It’s been a lot of hard work for all of the management team to get the team to play the right amount of discipline and everything else but they’ve surpassed all expectations with the performances they’ve put together.

We had a five-year plan to try and get ourselves up the table but we’re now in the semi-finals of the trophy – it’s an amazing transformation.

Devon got off to a great start but we managed to peg them back with the bowling of Mukesh Bhatt and Tom Bowler.

Our openers, Jayden Levitt and Ed Kilbee, are both in fantastic form and they set it up perfectly for our captain, Joe Breet, to lead the chase.

He was then ably supported by Henry Langford and Ashur Morrison, who hit the biggest six of the day with eight runs to go. Unfortunately, we did give away quite a few extras and that was a bit of a disappointment because it’s something that we’ve spoken about.

Things would have been a lot more comfortable if we were chasing a score of around 230, rather than almost 260.

Our guys have beaten a team with lots of ex-pros and they’ve got no fear this season – our group really was the group of death and even though we only played one game to get through it, we’re where we are on merit.

Staffordshire in the semi-final (on July 1) will be a whole different kettle of fish but we’re confident and the lads won’t even care who’s on their teamsheet.

Before that, we’ve got a three-day against Berkshire at Corsham starting this weekend.

We’ll be keeping the same 13 in the squad and it’s been tough on people like Paul Robbins, who has had to be the 12th man so far.