The most capped player in Plough history, went out to the middle with Yanni Baveas to open up. Unfortunately left stranded on 12,998 career runs at the end of last season, this was a moment Steve Britto had been waiting a long time for and he wasted no time in reaching the amazing milestone with a typically bullish drive to the off side boundary. Congratulations, Stephen!

His hunger for runs carried on unabated, though, as he pounced upon anything remotely off target to race to 27 before unfortunately picking out Third Man and being very well caught by Southbank stalwart, John Thornton. He had, at least, got us off to a blistering start.

Veteran Tom Lonnen joined Yanni in the middle and took some time to get off the mark, as a couple of bowling changes slowed the run rate right down. Wily veteran Tony Dalton, in particular, tempting and teasing with his flighty spin, but never actually giving the batters anything to hit. Yanni eventually succumbed to it and debutant, Bobby Woodcock joined Tom in the middle. He looks a good cricketer and was very unfortunately run out off a bye. Captain Davies was next in and played a couple of sumptuous drives down the ground before he too could not resist taking on Dalton, but picked the wrong ball to attempt it.

Ploughmans were teetering. Lonnen scratching around, finding scoring shots hard to come by with the drinks break rapidly approaching. We just needed a partnership. A change of bat for Tom and the always positive batting of Duray Pretorius gave us what we needed. The pair put on 88 for the fifth wicket with relative ease. Rotating the strike nicely and punishing anything off line or length.

Duray had looked completely in control, so it was a little out of the blue when he played on to his own stumps off Southbank’s new ‘mystery’ spinner for a well made 33. Meanwhile, Tom had finally found some fluency and was beginning to open his shoulders. He raised his bat for his half century but not long after that played a disappointingly loose shot to offer an easy catch to cover.

The tail wagged intermittently. CRS played the shot of the day with a beautifully timed late cut to a ball that had kept low and our other debutant, Tom Winter, showed he’s no mug with the bat to add 13* runs to our total. The innings ended 9 down with 193 runs on the board. I think we all felt we’d left a few out there but we had something to bowl at.

If you’re gonna defend a low-ish total though, you need your bowlers to deliver. Already denied the services of the most senior bowler in the Club and then, at the tea break discovering the 1st XI’s opening bowler had a back issue that would cruelly rob us of another strike bowler, the task was immediately made more demanding. John Walton and Itesham Aslam took the new cherry. The former struggled with his line a little and the latter dropped far too short unfortunately and Southbank were off to a flyer. In an attempt to slow them down the Skipper brought spin in early… and it worked. Bobby’s first delivery was a beauty, finding the outside edge from a forward defensive shot and Lonnen taking a sharp, diving, catch at first slip. The pair then repeated the trick in the next over to remove the other opener. We had a sniff, and when Duray bowled Thornton around his legs and Bobby picked up a well-deserved third wicket, clean bowling Southbank’s no. 5, our spirits lifted. That’s where the fun ended though.

Southbank’s no.3 and no.6 put on their own well constructed 88 run partnership to completely take the game away from us. Singh never really looked in trouble to be honest and Cowley showed some extraordinary hand-eye coordination as they both reached half centuries. This despite having to face a very spirited spell of seam bowling from Tom Winter, who was dreadfully unlucky to not get a wicket. Plenty of promise for that man going forwards, though!

The truth is we probably didn’t score enough runs and we certainly didn’t bowl or field well enough to take 10 wickets. Southbank ran out comfortable winners in the end. Early season rust for some, perhaps. We need to shed that asap if we’re to start winning more games of cricket, though.

Plough on!

Match report from Tom Lonnen