North Walls, Thursday 29th June 2023.
Another lovely late June evening greeted our arrival at River Park for our 20/20 versus the ever-competitive RHCH team.
Winning the toss and electing to bat first, we made a positive fist of batting on an encouragingly good and bouncy track.
From the off, Alex S (30 not out) looked bright with a flourish of attacking strokes and, despite losing Tom T for 8, accompanied by the fluent Skipper (25 not out) a decent total beckoned.
Whilst the middle order stumbled a little and wickets were lost, good attractive play from Jolly (9) and a late rally from both Prav and Yox saw a total of 114 posted.
In defence of this we were unfortunately lacking the President (who’d sadly strained his back whilst playing tennis) and were somewhat put to the sword by some hard-hitting Easton ‘ringers’ in the RHCH team.
Yet, we persisted, and with some success.
Three catches with the gloves from the ubiquitous Alex S and good takes by the Skip and Tom T and we chipped away at the opposition.
All our bowlers (Prav, Head of Salmon, Yox, Tom T & Chris S) took a wicket apiece and with the Skip taking two, we kept the pressure on until our total was passed in 17 overs.
Mention must also go to Jazz who again fielded superbly throughout the innings.
It was a shame to come second but we gave a good performance and came close to pinching it; it all felt a bit better however, after a hotdog and a drink back at the King Alf.
We move on to our trip to rural Wiltshire on Sunday (with a fit President back in the fold).
Let’s keep our good run of form going – go Racqueteers!
Result: RHCH win by 3 wickets
