Today Henleaze faced Fishponds Conservatives. This has always been a hard fought fixture, with some extremely close finishes in the past.

With Captain Jo poncing around vineyards in California, the skippers duties went to Ed the ever reliant vice captain. His toss winning skills weren't so reliable however, and he promptly lost this one to the Portly Pete of Fishponds, who, along with most of his team mates, get portlier every year…

So we were fielding, and thrown straight into battle was Dave, one of our new recruits. He bowled very well, taking two wickets for 15 in his four overs. Will opened at the other end, in the absence of Anth, going for a fairly miserly 15 runs.

Fishponds were scoring fairly well, helped enormously by the fact we only had 10 players, for which we were exposed at times on such a short boundary. Nevertheless, Jimmy and Stu took a wicket each, Craig our other debutant, myself and Tom bowled fairly tightly to finish.

At the end of the innings Fishponds scored a more than gettable but at the same time competitive 131 for 4. A good effort by all in the field considering we only had 10.

Mr Davies and I opened the batting; Ed went swiftly for a surprising 2! In previous seasons, an incident like this would be enough to bring panic and chaos to the middle and lower order, but Henleaze are a different kettle of errr fish this year….

On the subject of fish, fish faced Phil (when he's drunk anyway) was next to the crease and together we set about repairing the innings. I went for 28 caught trying to drive, and Phil went on to score a blistering 53 before retiring. (Them the rules in Stapleton)

This was to prove to be the turning point with the wickets of Craig, Dave and Ash (who still managed a couple of quick fire boundaries) falling swiftly. Losing wickets usually means dot balls and the runs inevitably dried up.

Tom Lambshead fought hard and somehow after some great shots managed to get us within a six of victory. Unfortunately this was off the last ball. Tom gave it everything but although managing to smash over the bowler whilst cracking the ball back, this unfortunate deflection went for 4. The game was up.

A good all round effort though, and a deserved man of the match to Philip 'the fish face' Sargeant.