A fun and excitable start to the first home league game of the season saw Captain Akhtar win his second toss in a row, and had no hesitation in sending in the Eversholt opening batsman after a short rain delay saw the game reduced to 48 overs a side.
Dom Goring fresh from his superb performance in round 1, got the ball rolling with a wonderful ball knocking the openers middle stump back in the first over. A start which was just dreamy.

Anish Patel shared the new ball with Dom and on a pitch with clearly no bounce, managed to find one which moved extravagantly from a length to catch the Eversholt number 3 plum in front of the stumps. At 15-2 the opposition opener (Gage) and their captain (J. Nicholls 63) set about restoring their innings and moved the score towards 100, before Captain Akhtar brought himself on and in a successful spell of bowling took 4-35 across his 10 to be the standout bowler of the innings. With the score at 120-5 in the 25th over the momentum swung in favour of the away side as first Nicholls, and then more destructively Davies (60) took the attack to OE’s and despite ringing the changes they were able to score runs at a canter, which along with some wayward bowling and sloppy fielding saw the side sit on 230-6 with 5 overs to go. Holland and Busby (3-35) were used at the death and provided the discipline to knock off the last 4 wickets and not concede too many runs as the opposition were all out eventually for 248.

After bowling 21 wides, and dropping a number of chances, the team were deflated but not fearful by the challenge ahead of them.

On a pitch with variable pace and no bounce to speak of, OE’s knew this would be a tough chase, and so it proved as Jimmy Heavey fell early to a good delivery from Fuller. Pricey and Scutt dug in, but on a pitch offering no support to the batsman, when lines and lengths were hit consistently by the bowlers the ball was very difficult to get away. Whilst both batsman got in, they both fell around the 22nd over, and at this point the required rate was up to 7 an over.

Kappa came in and hit some lusty blows but the flurry of wickets continued as he soon followed Scutt and Pricey, and a duck from the captain left OE’s on the back foot at 90-5 with 24 overs remaining.

A typically counter attacking innings from last week’s hero Lissowski (25) and his PIC Holland (26), saw the team add 50 in 8 overs and begun to wrestle the momentum back before Holland was caught at mid on by Avis and then Lissowski was caught on the boundary both off the medium pace of Macmillan.

With still 100 to chase and overs running out, Busby and Goring moved the score along briskly with some brilliantly clean strikes and some electric running which had the oppo panicking. Busby in particular was brutal on anything off line and scored 51 before being brilliantly caught right on the boundary edge by Davies, which left both Anish and Doliver that bit too much to achieve.

The team fell 19 runs short of their total, but picking up 18 points in a defeat where all three facets of the game did not click was not a bad return for the boys as they find their feet in Division 2b.

An away match over at Bushey next week is the next stop for the team, as the challenges keep coming.

Sunday see’s the boys take part in a day of T20’s at the club, with BBQ, music and commentary throughout the festivities which we hope to be well supported by all club members!