On a day when you definitely did not want to lose the toss, we lost the toss. Subsequently, Berkhamsted had no hesitation in asking us to don the pads.

In recent games bowlers have been on the receiving end, but today, on a pitch devoid of pace and bounce they were to thrive. Credit to Berkhamsted, their opening bowlers put it in the right areas and our batters were made to struggle from the off. With no pace to work with, timing the ball was difficult and apart from a couple of enterprising boundaries from Akein (11), run scoring was an attritional pastime. Luke S was the only one who weathered the storm as he compiled a hard fought 25. We did bat our 20 overs…just, however we were unable to force a late injection to the total as wickets fell in a clatter in the dying overs. Another 20 runs would have made the game very interesting. A target of 71 was set.

An hour and a half of extra drying of the wicket was without doubt beneficial to our opponents and whilst on another day they could have been one wicket down early, they managed to negotiate the opening overs unblemished. It was left to Dylan K (2-15) to breach the defensives of their opener, and he soon followed this up claiming a second victim courtesy of a tricky swirlingly chance taken expertly by Nimay at fine leg. Some encouragement then, and not long after 3 further wickets fell without any addition to the score, Adi combined with Issa to run out their other opener, and then Nimay (2-8) claimed two wickets with his first two deliveries, well taken catches by Akein and Harry. The 20 extra runs spoken about earlier may have been pivotal at this point, alas it was too little too late and a 5 wicket defeat resulted. We long for the return of sunshine, although there was certainly no lack of effort from the boys today.

M.O.M another excellent performance with the bat from Luke S, however, Nimay’s catch was almost worthy of the award on it’s own, thus add a couple of wickets and slightly less eye catching, his not out, it cements it for Nimay on this occasion.