By John Thompson

All good things must come to an end, and the 1st’s unbeaten run was ended by the narrowest of margins against East Oxford 2nd’s. We chose to bat first on a Lincoln College ground where chasing has proved to be exceedingly difficult and made steady progress before losing Martin with the score on 30.  With an outfield sporting grass longer than any we’ve seen this season, only Saurabh found scoring easy of the top order until he was out for 27 with the score on 50.  Lucky batted as well as anyone and eventually top scored with 37 but Wickets fell regularly as we limped to 129-9 before a late flurry from Govind (21) ably supported by JT took us to a final total of 152.

East Oxford’s approach was markedly different to ours with pretty much every batsmen throwing the kitchen sink at what felt like every other ball, an approach that led to many chances and half chances that we stuggled to take with Govind once again the pick of the bowlers taking the first two wickets.  The score had moved into the 70s before JT broke the third wicket stand and he and Martin then picked up the next three between them leaving the match evenly poised with East Oxford needing 30 with 5 wickets left.  Martin rang the changes and threw the ball to Lucky and brought back Govind and they almost did what seemed like the impossible dismissing one hard hitting batsmen after another until three were needed with the last man at the crease joining his East Oxford captain. A lucky inside edge to an almost perfect yorker from Govind (4-41) got the number 11 off strike and the skipper cut the next ball through point for the winning couple to inflict a single wicket defeat on us.