Another sunny day in this Summer of sunny days saw the Petersfield W10 side take on Fareham & Crofton at the Heath on Sunday. The Petersfield side fresh from their thrilling tie against Hambledon looked to continue their unbeaten start to the season, with Petersfield batting first.

One of the key elements of this season's games has been our ability to not lose wickets however this week saw a blizzard of Petersfield wickets fall to some faultless Fareham fielding. All of the first five Petersfield batters lost a wicket with nine wickets falling in total across the Petersfield innings, seven of the wickets to fall were catches and although 6 of our 10 batters made double figures with the bat after deducting the lost wickets only two, Charlie Hawkes and Alison Furse made double figures on a net basis scoring 12 and 10 respectively. The innings closed on 290 for 9, defendable but we needed to be at our best was the drinks break chat.

Unfortunately is was not to be the case as despite an early Beth Svarovska catch from the bowling of Alison Furse, three further catches hit the deck and a run out chance was missed as Fareham built a steady reply but without losing wickets. Despite this after six batters only two had hit double figures and Fareham were just ahead. Queue the entry of Sarah Atkinson who then proceeded to hit 8 sixes and keep virtually all of the strike to hit an impressive unbeaten 57 from just 20 balls leaving the Captain Kerry Grice to see home the comfortable 66 run victory with an unbeaten 19.

On the day we lost to the better side although better preservation of our wickets alongside our usual catching might have made it a much closer game.

Onwards and upwards.

Chris.