Having won the toss, the returning skipper elected to bat on a hot summers day. Paul was displaced as opener by the in form Peter, as along with Alex they opened the batting. Bowling conditions were at their best with the new ball, but Alex and Peter(12) took a bit of the shine off it before departing. This bought Ollie and Uma together with the score on 35 and they weren’t to be separated until it reached 198 as Uma departed caught for an assured 76. Ollie continued on with Gaurav(45) passing the 100 mark in chanceless fashion. Whilst we had been accumulating runs in a controlled and measured way, it would be fair to say that Gaurav injected a little pace into the run rate. This was continued by Alok(24 no) as he partnered Ollie to his final total of 156 not out giving us a handy total of 345-4 off 40 overs, a record for that ground by a margin I believe, and we still had Areeb, Paul, Prakash and Karthik  to come.

In reply, we know Great Missenden can bat and so they did. Wickets were hard to come by, but the scoring rate was always kept under control. Karthik(5-0-29-0) and Alok(5-1-13-1) had the dubious honour of taking on their openers and Alok duly and frugally removed one of them. Prakash(4-0-35-0) and Areeb(4-0-28-0) were next up to face their batsmen followed by Paul, no that’s not a misprint, (4-0-29-0) and a rather tired Ollie for some unknown reason (3-0-31-0). Great Missenden were behind on the run rate but they had only lost 1 wicket, so had plenty in hand to accelerate. If the headline of our batting performance has Ollie in the title the headline of our bowling performance definitely had Withams in it, just not Paul in front of it. Peter turned a likely win into a certain one as, along with Uma(7-0-52-2), posted figures of 8 overs, 1 maiden, 6 for 41. A good win and an enjoyable game with the guys from Great Missenden.

A brief mention for our Atiksh, who we lent them as they only had 10 players. Not out when batting for Great Missenden and bowled 4 overs for 35 runs at the death in our innings as well as saving countless runs in the field. We would have had over 350 if he hadn’t have been there. Much prefer it when he’d playing for us.