Reed went down to their heaviest defeat of the Sunday North Herts League Division 1 season on Sunday, after a dismal display against a strong Houghton Town team.
Despite the final score, Reed got off to a decent enough start, with Richard Johnson (8-1-26-0) and Andy Wholley (7-1-38-1) bowling well, with Wholley clean bowling Amjad for a duck. However, a good partnership between Faisal (50) and Nariner (32) helped get over the slow start. Captain Marcus Martin then introduced himself into the attack, and began to rip onto the Houghton batsmen with his hostile pace bowling. Martin took 2 key wickets, including that of Nariner. Jason Archer also bowled well, the slow medium bowler taking 2 golden wickets in his 7 over spell, split in half to allow him a to have a liquid break. Karl Ward and Rupert Martin also picked up a wicket apiece, but it was poor fielding that was to cost Reed yet again, and allow Houghton off of the hook. The big hitting Kashie ended up on 84, this despite being dropped no less than 5 times, including once on single figures. When Marcus Martin eventually got his man, to finish on good figures of (5-0-27-3), the damage had already been done. Houghton finished on 241 off of their 40 Overs. Reed’s misery was compounded when they also lost batsman Michael Robertson to a badly injured finger leaving them with only 10 players.
Reed’s reply started reasonably enough, with openers Ed Blissett and Phil Frenay putting on 24 for the 1st wicket, before Frenay was bowled by Azad for 10. Arshad then bowled Reed’s other opener Blissett for 12 leaving Reed in some trouble on 34-2 chasing a big total. Richard Johnson (14) and Marcus Martin (12) both looked set before falling to Arshad and Azad respectively, both times with the score on 52. Matt Bowles (6) and Karl Ward (5) both also fell to the big spinning pair of Kashie and Morris, and Graham Hazard then ran himself out for 4 to effectively end Reed’s hopes.
Jason Archer (5) and Andy Wholley (1) both fell to Faisal late on to leave Rupert Martin stranded on 14 Not Out and Reed 98-9, and effectively all out due to the injury to Robertson.
A clearly seething Marcus Martin blasted his sides fielding “It was abysmal. You cannot expect to win cricket matches if you drop as many catches as we did. In the end they (Houghton) got 80 runs too many, and that was not really the fault of the bowlers. That then put too much pressure on the batsmen, who in turn all dealt with it very poorly too. Thankfully I doubt we can play as poorly as that again, so the only way from here is up.”
