First 3rd team win for 2 seasons!

A well fought game with several strong performances meant the Village picked up a deserved 30 points.

After winning the toss Lawrence chose to bat first again with the intention of setting an imposing total. However at no point was he expecting Piers and Sunny to take the Village into the drinks break at 171-0 after 24 overs!

Both batsmen played exceptionally well, putting on 200 for the opening wicket, against an attack that appeared to lack a genuine threat, with Piers hitting an authoritative 99 including 11 fours and 3 sixes, before deciding that one jug would be sufficient for after the game and chumping himself out. Sunny then followed four balls later for a well made 84 (10 fours, 3 sixes).

In attempting to up the run rate, only Jon Bird (22) and Naz (14)managed to get hold of any shots and Lawrence eventually declared on 262-7.

After the turnaround, we struggled to impose ourselves, and after 8 overs Wheathampstead had already passed 50 without loss. However Liam managed to get a timely breakthrough, first of all shaving the leg stump with a ball that just managed to disturb the stumps enough to dislodge a bail before following up with a straightforward LBW.

A stubborn partnership then ensued which seemed to be putting Wheathampstead into a good position to mount a chase. However a piece of (deserved?) luck for Chalky resulted in the batsman inside edging onto his back leg and watching the ball trickle back onto the stumps.

Chalky then picked up the next two wickets with a ball that Murali would have been proud of, jagging back a good 3 foot to hit the top of middle and an edge behind that Lawrence tried his best to drop but at the third time of asking managed to hang onto.

As the run rate was around 8 runs per over and the watching first team were baying for him, Lawrence brought on the golden arm of Pete Jaffe to try to lure the remaining batsmen into playing expansive shots. 3 overs later Pete had figures of 2-0-9-3, at which point we only needed 2 wickets to win. With two batsmen at the crease who looked like they would block anything straight and leave anything wide, we were gifted a wicket when the Wheathampstead skipper chose to try and drive a ball outside off and inside edged onto his stumps, giving Liam his third wicket of the day. He soon followed up with the final wicket in his next over giving us a victory by 109 runs.

A pleasing result made more difficult than it necessarily should have been with at least 3 catches dropped, but overall an improved performance. Liam and CHalky's bowling plus the opening batsmen were the main highlights, but it was also good to see Jon Bird back playing and Shahme performing well on debut