The weather gods defeat us at Grange Park.

The gloomy forecast seemed a long way off as we arrived at a cloudy but bright Grange Park to face league leaders Haddon 2nd XI. The pitch having been covered overnight looked good and when Kev dually lost the toss Haddon chose to bat first.

Kev kept faith with James Dadge and Finn Herrington to open the bowling and both responded with good opening spells of 0-30 and 0-9 respectively. Both could feel rather unlucky not to get any wickets as they missed the edge of the opener’s bats and had both in trouble on occasions. First change saw Kev come into the attack along with Paul Wolstenholme. Kev picked up the opening wicket with the score on 64 for 1 having Nick Whorton caught at slip by Mark Glover. After 12 overs of the dynamic duo Haddon were 91 for 1 having survived some streaky edges and a couple of missed chances. Kev finished with 1-18 and Paul 0-21 off their six overs. On next were the spin twins of Finlay Moffat and Vignesh Sudhakar. Finlay struck early having the other opener Jason Helm caught superbly by James at extra cover for 43. That was now 91 for 2 and three overs later this got even better with Vignesh bowling Higgs for 5, score now 101 for 3. Haddon stuck in and reached a final total of 171 for 4 off their allotted 40 overs. The last wicket falling to Ian Street with Houghton caught at mid-wicket for 26 by Graham Harris. A reasonable effort by the lads with the ball and in the field.

After consuming our own teas, we set about our reply with the dark clouds creeping ever nearer. We reached 15 for 0, a steady start by Mark and Paul when thunder arrived and the storm forced us to leave the field. We lost approximately an hour and a quarter to the weather before it stopped raining enough to restart. With a DLS revised target of 159 to win off 36 overs we set about the task. Mark was first out LBW for 9, 19 for 1. Paul and Graham moved the total to 45 before Paul was stumped off the bowling of Clough for 12, 45 for 2. Harry Knibbs was bowled for 0 in the same over and we were now struggling at 45 for 3. We had passed the number of overs needed to constitute a game when the rain became heavier and we had to come off after 21 overs with our score on 49 for 5 losing two more quick wickets with both Finlay and James being bowled by Clough.

Jon Clough finishing with figures of 4 for 2 off 2 overs. We were well behind on Duckworth Lewis when the game was halted at 4:45pm with the rain persistently falling.

Result Haddon win by 122 runs (Duckworth Lewis) 20 points. Horton 2 bowling points.

Next Week 3rd Team away versus Raunds on Saturday 1st August.