On the hottest August bank holiday in living memory, Elstead played The Mandarins. They won the toss and elected to field (I wouldn’t have, it was too hot!). As the game got underway, Pete Lincoln and Will Ryman opened and had a 98 partnership. Later on, the Cheesemen went out and hit 40 between them. Your correspondent came and went without troubling the scorers making way for Ollie Lincoln who arrived at the crease and made it look rather more straight forward. His 16 runs got us to a very reasonable score of 203 – 9, so we believed that we were a decent way ahead.

Elstead walked out to field feeling confident. Too confident? Only time would tell.

Will and Nathan’s first few overs put the pressure on and runs were scarce. Will produced a great ball to remove their opening batsman. As we went on we collected a few more wickets – 1 more for Will, Cheese, Pat Murphy and 2 for Paul Williams.

At the end of their innings Mandarins had reached 159 and lost 6 wickets. Elstead finished 203 – 9.

My dad believes that it was a draw as it was a timed game but being 14 (and rarely wrong!) I think that we should take that as a win! Image result for smiley face symbol