The 2s travelled to one of the Sussex Premier League’s newest and nicest grounds Buxted Park for what was a good game of cricket but unfortunately lost by 5 wickets. Losing the toss we were asked to bat though captain Matt Charman thought Buxted said they would bat leading to the sight of both teams in full whites at 12.20pm, 10 minutes before the start.
However Curly Pummell and Andrew Davies overcame this and made a measured start against the impressive new ball pair of Brian Huxley and following a quick first change, Luke Miles. Davies was adjudged LBW quite a way out of his crease to his obvious chagrin but Akeem Ifill continued where he left off last week looking in good form. However when a well hit drive off Miles was hit in the vicinity of Harry Marchesi at short cover a quite brilliant one handed catch meant he had to go, a great grab. This meant it was going to be tough from there to put on a competitive total. Both Cromb and Punter came and went in breezy fashion but one man standing firm at the other end was Curly who despite not being at his most fluent was proving tough to remove. Charman joined Pummell and in the face of some good bowling they managed to get the run-rate up. A flurry of wickets followed but the skipper managed to work his way to a decent enough 51 before being bowled by Miles trying to up the rate again. We finished 177-9 but were grateful for a number of extras from BPCC. Curly made 18 runs which although he said he struggled with he did a great job seeing off the new ball, all you can ask of an opener.
After a top tea from Buxted (Div 6E teams will enjoy coming here – scones, prawn sandwiches!) we set out trying to defend a score that didn’t look enough in this authors view and so it proved. One of the openers got a decent 50 and despite wickets for Charman (2-29), Bobby Barnes, Cromb and Davies Buxted only once looked in trouble when a few quick wickets brought the run-rate down. One of those wickets was down to what was a superb catch in the deep from Andrew Davies. However after that it was skipper Steve Harris and Luke Miles who finished off the job with the minimum of fuss in the 38th over for their first win in the County League and well deserved it was too. They were a better side than us on the day.
So a 2nd loss but not for want of trying. A number of catches went down and we were guilty of giving too many easy runs with sloppy fielding but the attitude was still good. Onto a game at the weekend at distant but always welcoming Rye CC where hopefully we can play well and get a first win of the season.