The 3s travelled just over the hill to play Froxfield 2s on yet another glorious day in North Hampshire.

For the 3rd game in a row there were debutants with George Pearson and Nathan Linkhorn continuing the conveyor belt of talent coming through the colts system at the club. Skipper Dave Squires won the toss again and elected to field to make use of the new ball (only one ball per match in division 6.

George Pearson 2-34 opened the bowling and despite his skippers request to go over the wicket with his left arm pace went rou.nd the wicket and got the ball to swing late and into the batsman’s pads. In his 4th over he looked to have trapped Peter Fry (83) band in front but the umpire deemed the batsmen had got outside the line, the keeper and bowler would have asked for a review but unfortunately the DRS system was not working. Fry and S Patabendi (70) put away anything offline and put on 149 before Patadendi was clean bowled by a Jaffa of a delivery from Fraser Ansty (2-33) . Ansty then picked up the new batsmen in the next over giving Petersfield hope of getting back into the game but Froxfield skipper Mark Ingram (95 not out) put paid to that with some brutal batting as Petersfield’s bowlers wilted in the sun.

George Pearson came back and picked up 2 wickets (still swinging the ball late) and Max Oakley (2-26) at one point was on a hat-trick but Sebastian Fry (0 not out) survived the hat-trick ball. Froxfield finished on an impressive 345-6 but Petersfield again bowled the equivalent of 10 extra overs while conceding 60 extras!

Petersfield started well again their chase with skipper Squires (36) and Stuart Kidd (21) putting on 24 before Kidd was given out caught behind off M Wedage (1-30). Max Oatley (19) played some nice shots (once he got in ) and put on 50 with skipper Squires before he misjudged a straight from Patabendi (3-14) to lose his off stump. Patabendi was the pick of the bowlers for Froxfield with his late swinging accurate deliveries.

Squires was next out as a corker of a delivery that pitched middle and hit the top of off accounted for him from S Fry (2-16). Ther were good contributions down the order from Del Kelly (19) and Graham Linkhorn (10) but Petersfield never threatened the Froxfield score.

Despite another loss there were positives with the way the young lads performed with bat and ball. Was also great to see Heather Clarke back in the whites of Petersfield and despite not playing for a couple of years still bowled well in the face of strong batting.

Man of the match was George Pearson