Wednesday 7th May brought our first ever visit to WG's ground. A lovely little pitch made all the prettier by the generous early summer sun, obscurely set as a village green in Downend. Not the biggest pitch we've ever played on with one boundary particularly small on the clubhouse side. In fact captain Smith agreed with the opposing captain to only allow 4's to be scored on that part of the ground - no matter how big the shot.

WG's won the toss and elected to bat and HOBs immediately had them on the racks, Jon taking 3 for 8 off his 4 overs which included a hat trick chance which he inevitably fluffed. Barrett and Jo Smith finished with 2 wickets a piece, the pox ravaged Barrett scaring the opponents in a different manner to usual!

Usually tight in the field, the Old Boys bowling attack surprisingly managed 28 extras of which 27 were wides!! A club record methinks, although perhaps we should keep that off the website. Anyway we somehow allowed WG's to stumble to 93 for 8 without bowling and fielding particularly badly, we'll blame the small outfield and some very harsh umpiring…

Opening the batting for HOBs was a new chap by the name Andrew Barry, Skip Smith thought what better way to blood a new player than to give him one of the openers slots 'There you go Son, show us what you can do'.

Well he certainly did that with a masterful, patient display of defensive batting, especially handy when you play for HOBs hopeful hitters. Trahar at the other end went for a quacker.

The batman's job was made far trickier by a disgusting dusk sun glaring from behind the bowlers arm making seeing the ball almost impossible. Will blocked from that end coming in at 3, and smashed his now customary array of blows from the other shadier end. He fell for 34 attempting to smash the ball into the sun from the difficult end.

Batsman came and went, scoring quickly but never settling. Ed and Stu joined Pete with ducks and Fillingham helped out with a rapid 8 (including a big shot for 4 over the small boundary) before Jo finished up unbeaten on 7, with Barry carrying his bat in his first game, scoring 15 runs.

After a good start, and an England style middle order collapse, the game was won with 2.4 overs to spare making it a fairly straight forward victory for the Old Boys from Henleaze.