Reed lost out to promotion hopefuls Watford Town on Saturday in a rain affected game at the green. With the game evenly poised at a rain-break, both sides in hope of achieving a win and the 30 point maximum from the game decided that they were happy to risk defeat in hope of this.

The day began in glorious sunshine and Reed got off to a decent start with Baz Curtis (21) and James Heslam (53) putting on 37 for the first wicket. When Curtis fell attempting another powerful drive off the front foot, Chris Jackson joined Heslam. On a dry Reed wicket offering unusually useful assistance to the spinners, the opposition with two fine exploiters in their ranks made Jackson & Heslam sweat and really have to grind it out.

Nevertheless this was in part managed as they crept the score up to 80-1 after 20 overs with Jackson the main contributor before being bowled for a useful 28. Once Clarke at No.4 joined the fray the rain began to fall and Heslam began to cut loose and passed fifty. However once it appeared that the hardwork had been done the re-introduction of seam accounted for Heslam attempting a pull stroke on what had now become a skiddier wicket.

In fact this change in conditions hampered the Reed middle order as from 140-2 the innings came to an end at 193 in the 53nd over. Clarke batted well for his 44 but only the skipper Simon Jackson (14) and Marcus Martin (9) could really add much extra to the Reed innings in the last 20 overs.

In reply Watford were unsettled by an aggressive opening spell by Richard Johnson (2-30) as he took two wickets to leave the visitors at 39-2 after 13 overs. This was a good start for Reed but they were soon off the field for a lengthy rain delay and when the game restarted it had become a 20/20 type situation whereby to win Watford would need to score at over 6 an over and Reed would need to take 8 more wickets.

Despite a fighting spell by the ever-green Peter Tidey (2-82) the Watford batsman were up for the task and in particular former minor counties player S.Podger who smashed 65 off just 35 balls to effectively turn the game for the visitors. Unfortunately a weakend Reed attack short of several front liners including Clarke who suffered an ankle injury whilst batting, the Town made it home with 5 wickets in hand.

Skipper Simon Jackson said “it was obviously disappointing to lose but both sides said they would battle with the weather to try to get a result. Losing Clarkey was a blow and only left us with 4 bowlers after Andy Young pulled out on the morning of the game. I think we got the worst of the conditions, batting was hard towards the end of our innings and by the time they batted the wicket did nothing and the ball was like a sponge however Podger did hit some massive sixes. Our top 4 batted well again, we just could do with more runs from our middle order”