A perfect cricketing day greated Ploughmans on their arrival at Royal Ascot for the Sunday friendly. As with most Sunday fixtures, some of the team were a bit worse for wear after the previous evenings activities, so their was a degree of relief when Mr Feeney won the toss and elected to bat, allowing certain members extra time to recover.

Parks and Strachan opened the innings on what looked a pretty good batting pitch, however their partnership never got going as Strachan endeavoured to hit the opening bowler out of the ground, only to miss the ball completely and be stumped. This brought Jackson to the crease. Parks and Jacko set about building a platform for the rest of the innings and put 48 runs together before Jacko was out just before drinks for a well earned 20, all of which were boundaries.

At this stage Parks was starting to look comfortable however he was undone by the drinks break and was out 1st ball back for 22. With 2 new batsman in and only 48 from 20 overs the pressure was on the middle order to try and lift Ploughmans towards a competitive total. Unfortunately this never happened as wickets continued to fall and at 81 for 7 Ploughmans were facing the prospect of bring bundled out for less than 100. However some late runs from Feeney (22) and Yorkshire (who to the horror of the rest of the team top scored with 23no) Ploughmans were able to reach 141 all out in 40 overs.

It was fair to say the team were disappointed not to score more runs against bowling that wasn’t that threatening. Special mention should go to the opposition bowler  Hedges who in doing his best impersonation of Yorkshire picked up 5 wickets.

After the highlight of any cricket game, the tea break, Ploughmans came out knowing that they would need to make early inroads in order to triumph.

Ashton got the start we needed dismissing on of their openers with the score at 19. However with Silvey their opener anchoring the innings at one end, Royal Ascot made steady progress towards their total. Two more wickets to Ashton had the oppo at 74 for 3 and Ploughmans knew a couple more quick wickets would give them a greater chance for victory. Alas it wasn’t to be and Royal Ascot comfortably made the required total with 5 wickets in hand.

Silvey top scored with 45 and was unlucky not to get a well deserved 50.

Ploughman’s toiled well in the field with both Ashton and Gilman looking dangerous however they just didn’t have enough runs to bowl at and were beaten by the better side on the day.

MS