Reed Sunday XI’s inauspicious start to the season continued with a narrow defeat at home to Aston. Winning the toss and electing to bat the visitors made a slow start against some tight bowling from Archer and Allsopp, opener Burns falling for a solitary run in the third over. Haslam then made sure the runs were kept to a minimum with a fine spell of 7 overs 3-12. Aston crawled along at about 3 an over until 9th wicket pair O’Hanlon and Parker accelerated the run rate with some excellent running between the wickets to compensate for the lack of boundaries they were able to score. They put on 55 in 9 overs to see their innings close on 148-8.

Reed’s reply started slowly Watts and Bowcock finding it difficult to score in the face of some accurate bowling and excellent ground fielding. Blisset entered the frey scoring a quick 30 to give the innings some impetus. It wasn’t until Allsopp (17) and Hazzard (21) got together that the Reed reply really took off both batsman scoring quickly with both hitting huge sixes.

Unfortunatley they both fell within a short space of time leaving Reed 20 short with 4 overs to go. Archer and Ward then took the total to within 5 before Ward was out Collins followed quickly leaving 5 off the final over with genuine number 11 Haslam on strike. A bye to the keeper was run, 4 required, a wide followed 3 off 3 balls. But with Henman like qualities, Archer failed to connect off two and was bowled off the last ball.