By Rowan Sykes

In a tight affair between the two bitter rivals, the University of Bradford picked up their first victory in this year’s Varsity, beating Huddersfield by one run over the two innings. They won the match 2 – 0 overall, stopping the tie from going to a three-match series.  

Bradford’s opening batsmen were quick to score runs, picking up boundary after boundary, whereas the Huddersfield bowling attack could not find a way to stop the early onslaught. Bradford cruised to 61 runs from the opening four overs. 

But this was soon to change with the loss of Bradford’s big hitter, as Huddersfield steadied the ship, only letting in 27 runs in the next three overs of this clash. They began to wake up and find themselves in this well in this game.  

With runout confusion and a superb one-handed catch, Huddersfield limited the heavy hitters from Bradford 154 – 4 after their first innings.  

Huddersfield, however, were not able to match the late bowling intensity shown in the first innings in their batting. They failed to communicate properly with one another, leading to two runouts against the Blues after both batsmen failed to discuss their decisions. 

Huddersfield was all out in the first innings after the side continued to struggle against a strong bowling attack. Bradford dominated the first game, meaning for any chance for Huddersfield Cricket to continue the University’s unbeaten Varsity streak, the players would need to start finding some confidence in their shots and bowls. 

And they did just that, batting resiliently and finding confidence in their shots, finding the boundary on multiple occasions. They stormed to 150 runs in their second innings, a massive improvement from their first attempt at batting.  

This caused many spectators to consider this game going the distance of 5 games. 

Bradford’s opener, who tormented them in the first innings, was run out after some exceptional fielding from the Huddersfield players. Huddersfield seemed confident about taking the game to a deciding match-up. 

But it wasn’t to be as the Bradford pairing left at the crease resiliently stayed in for the remaining overs of the second matchup, winning the game by one run with only three balls remaining after some excellent management of their wickets. 

A valiant display from Huddersfield still goes down as a defeat, the University’s first of Varsity 2025 and the first of Wednesday’s fixtures. Let’s hope this isn’t the theme for the day.