Sunday XI v Mogador Wanderers

After the rain on Saturday, the ground had dried well and, apart from a few drops of rain early in the Mogador Wanderers' innings, the mach was played in the dry.

The captains agreed to play a traditional declaration match and, winning the toss, Mogador Wanderers elected to bat and were making good progress despite the loss of opener Forner with the score on 17, as Cooper and Jackson shared a 50 run partnership at nearly 5 an over. But the bowlers stuck to their task and were well supported in the field with eight catches being held. Six bowlers were used and each took at least one wicket, including Lee Soar with his debut spell for the Sunday XI and Theo Clarke returning the excellent figures of 4 0 9 2. The opening pair of Adnan Khan and Andrew Herring were each rewarded with a wicket, Andrew taking perhaps the pick of the catches off his own bowling. Alex Serrano and Nick Owen applied their left arm magic to claim three and two wickets respectively and start the collapse of the Mogador Wanderers' middle order. With Theo and Lee polishing off the tail, the visitors were well short of a competitive score on 113 all out, having been 72 for 1!

After an excellent tea, Toby Pheasant (53*) and Theo Clarke (11) started energetically, hitting early boundaries and running quickly between the wickets. Theo fell to a very sharp catch in the slips to usher in Nick Ball on his debut for the Club. Nick (28) and Toby continued to take the attack to the bowlers, sharing in a 50 run partnership which laid the foundation for victory. After Will Cooper managed to sneak one through Nick's forward defence, Pat Clarke, having already experienced some geographic challenges while in the field, failed to locate the boundary once again as he attempted to drive the ball with considerable force through the fielder at shortish mid-wicket who could not get out of the way and has the bruise to show for the resulting catch lodged in his midriff. Enter Jeff Soar (16*) who was soon into his stride with two beautiful drives, one for 6. Jeff and Toby completed the task as the Sunday XI won by 7 wickets, a very pleasing result against traditionally strong opponents.

Many thanks to Pip Clarke for scoring and Trevor Walters for umpiring!