Ashmanhaugh 'A' v Drayton 'A' 23rd May 2009

Ashmanhaugh 'A' 162 Drayton 'A' 163-8 Jason Trett’s return to his former club brought a typically tight bowling performance and an explosive batting assault on the Ashmanhaugh bowling. But he eventually had to share the honours with young Thomas Cooke, batting at number 10, who saw Drayton over the line with a mature 22 not out.

Without the bowling of Nigel Massingham, who was resting his injured back, Drayton skipper Graham Crowe rotated his four-man seam attack. Rob Reeve gradually settled to a couple of longer spells, bowling his full 12 overs, to finish with a welcome 5-33. For a while, Stibbons threatened, scoring 33 of the first 36 Ashmanhaugh runs, but he fell to the accurate Trett. The rest of the Ashmanhaugh innings revolved around Warminger (51), who was watchful at first, then broke out with some powerful legside hitting and Metcalf, who managed some stylish drives in a rapid 19. Marc Gridley, playing his first Drayton A game, bowled well after a rather stiff first over, but he found each occasional bad ball was hit for four. Jamie Scarff came back to secure two wickets in his second spell. Jason Trett was mean: his first spell was 9-2-19-2, and he came back to help secure maximum bowling points with 2-6 in 15 balls.

Knowing that Jason had to leave at 5.30, Crowe wisely promoted him to open the innings. In addition to one perfectly executed forward defence, he smashed 39 of the first 42 runs, with 5 fours and 2 sixes. After that Mike Sutton (17) and Chris Coupland (28) took the score calmly to 87, before Ashmanhaugh’s Mayes, bowling leg breaks, started to work his way through the Drayton order. He eventually finished with 6-46. Drayton with plenty of overs left were running out of batsmen. Cooke, who had hurt his hand keeping wicket, then came in to play with good sense and enterprise, in partnership with Gridley. They ran singles intelligently, played out Mayes’ last couple of overs, and Cooke put awaya nything short from the nippy Metcalf. Drayton were home for their first win of the season in the 39th over.RT