Burgess Hill suffered another heavy defeat, against a strong looking East Grinstead 3rd team, losing by 9 wickets after a stunning batting collapse. Having reached 101-6, the tail certainly didn’t wag, as the last 4 wickets went down without a single run being added. Grinstead, then reached their target comfortably thanks to an unbeaten 66 from Thomas Beswick and 27 from Jamie Leppard. It might have been a different story had skipper Paul Elphick not shelled a dolly of a slip catch when Beswick was on 4 but in fairness, the bowling lacked any sort of penetration, as Grinstead benefited from their first team’s abandonment, with several 2nd team players coming down to play
Hill themselves had Dan Rapson, Tom Penfold and Kirk Proto playing, and it was the latter 2 who top scored between them, Penners 37 and KP 24 but after they both departed only Luke Dorgan 22 offered any resistance as Nick Trotter took 3-31.
Hill only took 2 points from the encounter and having been promoted to the 2nd Division are rooted to the foot of the table, in what everyone knows is going to be a testing and extremely trying season. The team needs to stick together and persevere, with more application in the batting department needed quickly, as the youngsters encounter a huge learning curve in senior cricket. Onwards and upwards this weekend to sunny Colemans Hatch!