Reed Fourths welcomed Old Albanians Fourths to the Freman Oval on Saturday. Buoyed with a full complement of players, Lloyd Bowman won the toss and elected to bat. Opening with the bowling attack of Neil Haslam and Martin Johnson. OAs seized on some early loose bowling and Johnson was soon replaced by Kieran McKinna who couldn’t stem the flow from the Reed end. Meanwhile after a jittery first couple of overs Haslam settled into a rhythm and the left-hander Turner in particular found his late swing difficult to judge. Short after reaching his fifty Haslam bowled a ball that both swung and moved away and was pouched one-handed at slip by Matt Giblin (90-1). Haslam ended his spell with figures of 8-0-42-1 and was unlucky not to have added to his tally.

Zac Conley took up the attack and his first three overs conceded only five runs; however Goodien upped the tempo with some superb square cutting and some poor Reed ground fielding. 13-year-old Jack Beber on his adult cricket debut took a wicket in his first spell (4-0-16-1) trapping S. Rabbitt lbw for 7 (141-2). Goodien powered on and was supported by Wakeling as OAs looked for a score well in excess of 250. Johnson (8-0-46-1) returned to bowl Wakeling for 29, Thakar with an unbeaten 13 and Goodien with a faultless 167 not out took the visitors to 296-3 off 40 overs.

Peter Baker and Martin Johnson opened Reed’s reply and steadily reached 41 before an Iqbal off-cutter bowled Baker for 17. Johnson was forced to retire with cramp so Benj Mansfield and Zac Conley took up the response. The score reached 99 when Mansfield was bowled for 18. Johnson returned and Conley and he took the attack to OAs. The next seven overs added 79 runs, before Johnson was bowled for 55 (178-3), Bill Mansfield soon followed and when Conley was out for 70 Reed were now 187-5. Kieran McKinna kept Reed up with the pace with a brilliant 34, but wickets were falling at regular intervals. Giblin played a cameo 13 despite being hampered with injury. Beber capped a good debut with 6 runs before being caught superbly in the covers by Bates and it was Bates again with a diving catch to remove last man Haslam. Reed was all out for 247, losing by 49 runs, Reed picked up 13 points.

Report submitted by Neil Haslam.