Playing away to Thorley often seems to bring the best out of Reeds batsmen. Two seasons ago Tom Greaves registered a personal score of 179 and last year the Reed total was in excess of 340 including a century from Richard Barlow. Once again there was another impressive performance by Reed’s batsmen. With the Sunday firsts playing in the Village Cup their usual captain Ed Blissett was in the two’s and led the young side due to a serious injury to Peter Baker, out with a broken thumb.
Blissett won the toss and elected to bat, opening were Aiden Swain and Fergus Martin who started at a gentle pace before Swain (11) was caught with the score on 40. Blissett then joined the younger Martin out in the middle and the two made a partnership of 87 together, Blissett making 52 before retiring. Richie Barlow chipped in with 14 before young Sean Tidey in at number 5 joined Martin who by this time had also passed 50. The score was 150 from 31 overs, by the time the innings was over 9 overs later the score had leaped to 254 thanks mainly to a hard hitting display from Tidey who made 62* (10×4 & 2×6).
Meanwhile, Martin seeing the overs run out accelerated his run rate trying to make it to three figures. He had hit 7 off of Pack’s 5th over before putting one up in the air and being caught with the rest of the team stunned as at no other time did he look close to getting out. He was one run shy, out for a fantastic 99.
In reply Thorley gave a good go at chasing the large total down, opener Pack hitting a belligerent 54 and there were a few other scores down the order but they finally succumbed for 184 all out. Julian Fynn (8-0-45-1) and Christian Martin (6-0-28-2) opened the bowling with Jason Pallett (6-0-26-1) and George Garrott (5-1-24-2) replacing them. Josh Conley (4-0-25-0) also bowled well. Fergus Martin also had a turn with the ball and once again fell short of the honours board returning figures of 4 for 27. There were also some fantastic catches from J. Fynn, E. Blissett, R. Barlow, G. Garrott and a stumping from M.J.E. Baker.
