A VERY GOOD DAY but it is quite a lot of work without a Sarah there. We played a 40 over game and bowled first starting with, arguably, the finest opening pair seen for the V & A – Jake and his mate Jack who is 6 inches taller and even quicker.Dennis and Adam came on afterwards and both bowled very well. Without Bird N. or Andy we were short a keeper so Fredi Devas, who kept for Bedales under 14s, bravely put the gloves on. He did a top job but dropped a sharp one off Jack and a low one off Adam, before getting hit on the side of his eye from an edge off Den’s 5th over. Richard Woolhouse took over for the last few before lunch while Fredi was patched up. Jake picked up the first wicket in his 5th over, with their opener adjudged LBW having taken a big stride (he later moaned that in his ‘40 years of competitive cricket’ he had not agreed with a single LBW decision against him).To be fair we would never give a batsman out that far forward.

Den bowled their No 3 with one of his slower balls and Dave caught their Aussie No. 4, who was looking good, off Adam. They were 60 odd for 3 at lunch after 24 overs. After lunch they upped the run rate with their No 5 scoring well off some generous bowling from the veteran Alistair Warman, Veggie Pete and Luke Pearce. Richard Woolhouse bowled 4 tidy overs in between. Jack came back when they were 130-3 and promptly bowled a killer ball which jagged back a huge amount and took leg stump. The Pretenders’ veteran Richard Cowley came in and batted well for 15 odd runs before succumbing to the excellent Jack, feathering one behind to Fredi who held on.They finished on 164-5 from 40 overs with their No. 5 not out 73. A pretty good total considering our attack.

We opened with Adam and Richard with Adam surviving a very impressive opening over.It looked like it was going to be a close game until this opening bowler pulled a muscle in his 2nd over, and we soon realised they had no other bowler who could really threaten or keep it tight.

Adam played freely, scoring only in boundaries [he hates running], all on the leg, for a quickfire 30 odd before getting out to a straight one. Richard looked in control but was out for 20 to another dodgy LBW decision (their Keeper didn’t even appeal). Den came in and played fluently, scoring a very quick 41 with 2 reverse sweeps [!]. It was a bit easy and while I was clearing up there was some banter in the middle that got just a bit iffy. Some Pretenders seemed to think we were taking the piss [which we were not] and when, with around 20 to get, they got Den out, then Jack (a very good bat who scored a wonderful straight 6 amongst his 40 odd runs), I came in to find the bowler getting very excited sensing an unlikely victory. We were 4 down and only needed 5 runs! He then bowled Jake, who had hit a couple of lovely off-drives, and Dave two balls later. Their bowler punched the air in the restrained manner of that role model Joey Barton or Alan Smith. I passed their total next over to silence the bowler’s somewhat premature celebration. Every team seems to have an excitable or exuberant player (ours was away).