A useful pre-season encounter

In many ways this friendly, was a bit of a shambles. Nevertheless, it offered those who played, some useful pre-season practice on the Saturday before the league gets underway. Quite a few of the regulars were still absent on football duties or had other 'excuses'. The match up with a Hampstead CC XI was a reasonably even contest. The Village were inserted having lost the toss and cobbled together 197 all out, with 2 balls going unused in the 40 over innings. There were only 8 Village players at the ground when the match started, so a reshuffle of the planned batting order was required. Dan Potter (65) and Shame Farook (38) were the main contributors.

197 on a sticky wicket was plenty of runs and should have been enough to defend. However, a combination of poor bowling, dropped catches and sloppy fielding, from most of the Village contingent, enabled Hampstead CC to get over the line with the relative comfort of 2 overs to spare. It was the first outing of the season for most of the Village team, so excuses for the below par performance were easy to find. Everyone should be better off for the run out and most of the bowlers seemed to be finding some rhythm towards the ends of their spells. It should at least serve to make the performances in the first league games a little bit better than they otherwise might have been. The Village have been traditionally slow starters in recent years and could do with improving this record on the first Saturday of the new league season next week.