Reed maintained their 6th position in Division 2 of the Herts League on Saturday by closing the gap on those above them with a winning draw away at Watford Town.

Arriving on a cloudy afternoon, Reed lost the toss and were asked to bat. Despite losing Baz Curtis to the second ball of the innings, Reed rebuilt against some accurate bowling from R.Ingram (18-4-62-2) and J. Vanee (15-2-60-5) with James Heslam taking the attack to the opposition with an imperious 73 before unluckily inside edging a ball onto his stumps. Chris Jackson (20), Ray Kingshott (20), Stuart Smith (14) and Marcus Martin (5) all contributed strongly in the middle order, and it took some resolute batting from Reed’s early tail, including a typically powerful 16 from Richard Jerome, and graceful 16* and 20* from William Clarke and Richard Johnson respectively to haul the visitors to their total of 206 for 7 off 52 overs, one over being lost due to a rain interruption.

The reply began poorly for the hosts, with N.Sen being trapped LBW for 14 off Richard Jerome (19-4-36-5) leaving them 15-1. Jerome continued to apply pressure from his end as he picked up some further top order wickets, including that of Southam who built a useful 44. However, when the rain came, the match ended up being reduced to 38 overs making the target virtually unattainable, and as such the game began to peter out. Only when Clarke came on with a short 1 over spell at the end to pick up 2 cheap wickets (1-0-8-2) did Reed look like they could have bowled Watford out, but there were simply not enough overs remaining. Richard Jerome’s impressive bowling spell was strongly supported by some predictably dogged in swing bowling from Peter Tidey (10-2-33-0) and some, at times, hostile deliveries from Richard Johnson (4-0-23-0).

The home side ended up gleaning 2 points from the match against Reed’s 17, clearly demonstrating who had the better match. 1st XI skipper, Simon Jackson was clearly delighted: “We had a great performance, but were disappointed that rain spoilt the game a bit. We felt we were in a position to bowl them out after a strong batting performance. It was good to see the entire batting order from top to bottom firing again.”