East Meon v Petersfield

The first game of the season for what was essentially the Sunday side ended in a close fought but ultimate defeat to East Meon. Captain for this game, Jack Hannam lost the toss and we were asked to field. As said above the team was a mixture of 1st team players, 3rd team players and under 18s Petersfield got off to a fantastic start with Liam Charles (1 for 5 off 5) and Simon Dodd (3-28 off 5) reducing the home side to 34-4, with Will Rice and Toby Austin taking a couple of stunning catches at backward point and gully. The wickets continued to tumble as some inspired field placing from captain Hannam resulted in wickets for Will Rice (1-13 off 4) and young Alex Squires (1-15 off 5). Some tight bowling by Dave Squires in tandem with his son kept the scoring rate down, although the son dropped a catch off his dad at short fine leg to leave Dave with 0-13 off 5. Oli Shapey then came on and single handedly blew away the tail taking 3 for 0 off 2.5 overs with some beautifully straight line and length bowling including 2 in 2 balls (including ex Petersfield player Josh Haslet) with the batsmen on the hatrick keeping out the same delivery that had accounted for his 2 team mates (just). Oli Shapley then ran out 78 year old East Meon stalwart G ‘Bash’ Blackman with a wonderful run out off his own bowling. Petersfield then set about chasing down the 101 scored by East Meon. The Innings got off to an equally dreadful start with Will Rice (0) and Oli Shapley (0) going in successive deliveries in the first over bowled by M Downlen (2 for 15 off 6). Once the opening spells were over, Jack Hannam (13) and Rory Newman (29) went about rebuilding the innings moving the score along to 32 before Hannam was clean bowled by spinner Jamie Atkinson (5 for 22 off 8 overs). Wickets continued to tumble with no one able to get to grips with the spin of Atkinson and Sam Meyer (3-24 off 5) before Liam Charles (29) came in and hit some lusty blows of both spinners before he ran out of partners giving Atkinson his 5 for with Petersfield falling 20 runs short of their target. A good pre-season test for the lads who proved that a lot of the bowling in the nets over the winter had worked wonders with a very good bowling and fielding performance. The batting came up against some quality spinners who exploited conditions very well, but there were signs things will get better soon. With the hard work in the batting nets soon to bear fruit it seems, as we are unlikely to come up against spinners that good very often (well we can hope !) for the rest of the season.