Yet another glorious Hampshire day welcomed us on arrival at the beautiful Ramsdell ground. Ramsdell won the toss and chose to field.

With a bowling attack bowling mostly slow line and length balls on a very good pitch all St. Mary’s batsmen with the exception of Tom struggled to score. Such was Tom’s dominance that he contributed 50 of the 71 opening partnership with Jambo and 46 for the second wicket partnership of 71 with Woody. When Tom was eventuallly out for 104 Stephen Reid and Andy Wade tried to push on the score, both did so to the best of their abilities but it was a battle. Eventually St. Mary’s finished on 203 the thinking that this was probably 20 too few on a good batting pitch with a very fast outfield.

Ramsdell started steadily and reached 85 for 2 at the midway point this brought in Jack and Pete Ballard who scored more freely and threatened to take the match away from St. Mary’s before Saurabh dismissed Pete and then Stevie caught and bowled Jack. But the middle order kept chipping away particularly the partnership between Mark Morley and Harry Ryder who took the score to 200 when both were out in quick succession with Harry run out by Woody and Mark bowled by a brilliant ball from Chris Hudson. This left 4 to get off the last over, a dot ball followed by a ball to Andrew Mansell which he clipped off his legs under the despairing dive of Keith to win it for Ramsdell in the closest of battles. Those 20 runs short were so significant at the end of the day.

Man of the match: Tom Lee for his brilliant 100. Credit must also go to Chris Hudson who bowled and fielded brilliantly.
Wally of the day: Andy Wade for falling over on the boundary when the ball was nowhere near him.
Champagne moment: