London Colney II

Reed suffered a crucial early loss as their usual run getter Marcus J.E. Baker played down the wrong line and was bowled first ball. In his absence fellow opener Richie Barlow dug in and took on the responsibility of leading the way. He begun to put runs on the board and after a second cheap wicket was helped in this feat by Ray Kingshott (25). They had just about settled the teams nerves when three quick wickets fell including the two set men Kingshott and Barlow (30). Jack Caine put in a crucial turn with an impressive knock of 21 however, the rest of the middle order failed to fire. In the end it was left to the tail to get Reed to somewhere close to a defendable target. Ian Roberts led the way assisted by Joe Graves who made a solid contribution. Graves (18) kept out the good balls and put the bad ones away to the boundary. After Graves, Reece Fitzgerald partnered Roberts (33) as they upset the hosts who obviously wasn’t expecting such resistance from 9, 10, jack. The last few wickets took Reed from 94 to 166 all out.

After tea it was again up to the Reed bowlers to do the hard work as they went about bowling out the opposition. Jack Caine and Joe Graves both had good opening spell but only Caine (1-25) could take a scalp in his last over before the age related bowling change. Roberts (1-33) and Fitzgerald (2-36) were also looking good as they sent down some tight bowling but the host’s batting was resilient. Reed’s total was eventually surpassed with only the 5 wickets taken by Reed, Matt Naeem (1-28) chipping in.