Penn Street vs Hillingdon Manor

Penn Street CC beat Hillingdon Manor CC by 5 wickets

Hillingdon Manor CC 142-8 (M. Singh 50)

Penn Street CC 146-5 (Alistair Cossins 46, David Adams 31*, M. Singh 3-36

Hillingdon Manor were late replacements for Jordans Taverners and gave Penn Street a competitive game even if they were ultimately unsuccessful. Having to rejig their batting order due to some players being held up in traffic did not exactly help them and this made life somewhat easy for the Penn Street opening bowlers. David Adams was, as ever, swift and accurate and Jamie Fryer matched him in every respect bowling from the Wood end. Indeed, much of the time they were actually too good for the batsmen to lay a bat on and after David had castled one of the openers it took the change bowling of Chris Lovewell and Jeremy Knox to pick up the next two wickets, one bowled and one safely held by Jonny Barnett at square leg.

The visitors might have assumed that it was not going to be their day when their number four batsmen absolutely hammered the ball towards the cover boundary, only for Alistair Cossins at short cover to stick out a hand and pluck it effortlessly. One of the catches of the season so far.

Penn Street captains are known for being a charitable lot when the mood arises and James Sempill is no exception. He therefore introduced the club secretary into the attack and this seemed to give some hope to Hillingdon’s batsmen, so much so that one of them chipped a low full toss straight back to the bowler and another then gifted James the chance to show off his own fielding skills with a good running catch at mid-off.

The Hillingdon numbers seven and nine both proved to be competent if somewhat unorthodox and a hard-hitting batsmen and both rode their luck considerably, the number nine benefiting from an absolute howler of a dropped catch from the secretary as he made 24 not out, whilst the number seven got to his half-century before falling to the third excellent catch of the day, this time from a running Chris Lovewell well. All this meant that from a somewhat precarious position Hillingdon were able to make their way to 142 for eight.

Penn Street got off to a somewhat shaky start, with both James and Jamie falling cheaply. Alistair, however, showed his class as a batsmen and held the innings together, combining solid defence with some classy drives and one powerful six. He was ably supported by Alex Woest and PeterJon Williams who both made good contributions to the score, PeterJon apparently hitting his first ever six along the way. The departure of all three of them may have given some hope to the opposition, but this was quickly snuffed out as David was joined by Simon Fox in a punishing partnership for the sixth wicket, both scoring at well over a run a ball to see Penn Street home.