After a freakishly high scoring losing draw at London Tigers, the 1st XI returned to more familiar disappointments at home to Brentham – not scoring enough runs. With the weather again resplendent, captain James Dangerfield won the toss and chose to bat first on a good looking pitch.

Max Joseph fell early, but his opening partner Sunny Kanuparthi built a composed innings of 41, leaving the crease at 55-2. However, by this time Brentham were operating with slow left arm spin from both ends and negating this kind of bowling has long been a shortcoming of Southgate’s 1st XI. Hugh Hyslop scored a mature 38 from 58 balls, but nobody else was able to effectively rotate strike, let alone put pressure back on the bowlers. SLAs Kand and Bradley finished with 7 wickets and 1 wicket respectively, and with a runout thrown into the mix, Southgate were all out for 131 in the 51st over.

Brentham got off to a swift reply with one opener playing nicely and the other more fortuitously – Daragh Edwards was unlucky to go wicketless – and their first wicket didn’t fall until the 9th over with their score on 55. Laurence Perry was initially less accurate than we have come to expect, but found his rhythm and became very difficult to navigate. He dismissed two Brentham batters clean bowled with near identical googlys. The Brentham batting order had recently experienced a collapse and again wavered with 5 wickets falling for 17 runs. Laurence picked up 4 for 40 off his 12 overs and the evergreen David Woffinden took 3 before Brentham eventually crept to their target, albeit with plenty of overs to spare.

The 1st XI were again left wondering how they might have fared had they been able to accrue a total closer to the 180 mark. We shall never know.

Max Joseph