Penn Street vs West Herts

Penn Street CC beat West Herts CC (5^th Eleven) by 8 wickets.

West Herts CC 224-9 (Shiraz 88, Yash 49: David Adams 3-17)

Penn Street CC 225-2 (David Adams 92, Tom Peacock 65*, Matthew Reavey 35)

Although this looks like it was a comfortable victory for PSCC, in reality it was not, largely due to their own shortcomings in the field. Totalling everything up, there were 6 dropped catches, one muffed runout, no fewer than 41 extras and innumerable misfields to make the total they were chasing at least 50 runs higher than it should have been.

Things were not helped when Alex Woest suffered a nasty injury in the 38^th over of the West Herts innings. Standing at slip, he was hit in the face by the ball when it deflected off wicketkeeper Simon Fox’s gloves. Fortunately the damage was a lot less than it could have been (no need to go into the gory details here) and Alex hopes to be back playing before the end of the season.

Penn Street actually made quite a strong start to the game, with the opening bowlers each picking up a wicket as West Herts crawled to 14-2 off the first eight overs. The visitors were able to accelerate from there on, especially during a 122 run stand for the fourth wicket that was only ended when Jeremy finally persuaded Yash to edge behind, thus giving us the long awaited ‘c Fox b Knox’ entry.

That rather put the brakes on the West Herts innings and skipper Nick Loftus did a good job of setting fields and juggling his bowlers to prevent opener Shiraz from keeping the strike. In frustration he called for a quick single, was sent back and run out by a bullet throw from Jeremy. Alex and David bowled fast and well, Jonny was denied an LBW that looked to be hitting at least two stumps, Richard pulled off the second run out of the innings and there was just time for the Secretary to pick up another comedy wicket: One batsman implored the other to ‘move towards the ball’, which was generously interpreted as ‘literally run past the ball and lose your middle stump’.

Faced with a target of 225 to win and knowing that he was a batter down due to Alex’s injury Nick had no hesitation in sending in Matthew Reavey and David Adams to open the Penn Street innings. They made serene progress, largely untroubled by an opposing bowling attack that was more enthusiastic than it was accurate. It was a surprise, then, when Matt departed leg before for 35 just after the century partnership had come up.

That gave an opportunity for Tom Peacock to make his long-awaited debut. He started slowly, taking singles from his first two balls and generally allowing David to continue flaying the attack around the common. Once David was out for an excellent 92, though, he and Simon saw Penn Street safely home with almost ten overs to go, along the way becoming the second player this season to make a fifty on debut.

PSCC Team: Matthew Reavey; David Adams; Tom Peacock; Simon Fox (wk); Steve Smith; Jeremy Knox; Nick Loftus (capt); Richard Spooner; Richard O’Hagan; Jonny Barnett; Alex Woest