Newshound: Peter Simmonds

President present – after his scenes in filming kyboshed, Clive Swift comes
out to Princes Risborough to inspire the team, and subs briefly and
reassuringly in the slips, though sadly has to depart by tea,

Team assembles from far and wide to sunny Buckinghamshire – toss won by
stand-in skipper, opposition inserted, ball fished out of stream bordering
the outfield by third ball.

However, pacey burst by PJ Harvey results in opener Tony Ainley taken at
slip, and oppo limited to four an over, which is roughly where they stay all
innings.

Tight fielding prevents the score going too quickly. Chiari uses wind behind
to flight leg-spin tantalisingly, Flat fires it in. Good bursts by Mike
Harvey and some lively pace from Springbok tyro DesMeules set up a closing
burst from the openers. Webster wins his own private battle with big-batting
tormentor, and a target of just over 4 per over is set by the close.

Openers Hogben & Chiari tick scoreboard over against erstwhile colleague
Jasper Holmes and some slower medium pace from the other end, but then the
dashing doc from down Sussex way holes out at mid-off. Pytches hammers a
fast short spinner for four, and then is disappointed to get out to one so
slow it barely reaches the stumps,

But alas it does. Mid-order wobbles continue when Johnstone departs, but
Hajela proves rather good at picking chest high full tosses and putting them
past the boundary, and at 83-3 after 20 overs, WCC look good.

But departures of Hogben and Hajela in consecutive overs reduce this to 94-5
after 23.

Enter the Harvey brothers, who with a combination of fraternal run-calling,
nicely middled-shots, the occasional snick past the stumps and a couple of
cracking drives on the up, see off the best bowling and take advantage of
the change attack to judge the run-chase about as well as it can be judged,
adding 72 in 15 overs to seal the win with 15 balls to spare.

All round, a top team effort – no catches spilt, misfields countable on less
than the fingers of one hand, and contributions throughout the side – sets
up Hertford on Tuesday nicely, wouldn’t you say?

NB – veterans will be pleased to hear Tony Ainley is back and looking very
well for London Theatres after his operation, and perhaps even more amazed
to hear that we got him for a duck, which may well not have happened before?

NB again – Mr Holmes, of email fame earlier this week, managed 4 and
8-1-22-0. Just thought I’d note that…

STATS
London Theatres – 164-8 (40 overs)
P Harvey 8-0-19-1, Webster 8-0-40-2, M Harvey 4-0-18-0, Chiari 8-0-28-2,

Simmonds 8-1-20-3, DesMeules 4-0-29-0

Catches: Simmonds (2), M Harvey, J Harvey, Johnstone

WCC 166-5 (37.3 overs)
Hogben 36, Chiari 15, Pytches 4, Johnstone 0, Hajela 29, M Harvey 33*, P
Harvey 33*, 16 extras
(J Harvey, DesMeules, Webster, Simmonds DNB)

NB – I think we say a temporary farewell to Chris Johnstone, off to Aus for
a short while – we’ll miss ya, big feller.

Peter.