Wellington 1st XI made it five wins in the month of July when they finally broke their Staplegrove hoodoo and beat their local rivals for the first time in five years at this level in a rain-affected match.

On a green-topped track Wellington skipper Rob Moysey had no hesitation in asking Staplegrove to bat and the opening attack of John Paine and Thom Trott immediately got to work as they delivered an exacting spell of pace bowling.
Paine’s left-arm angle of delivery caused problems throughout and he let just nine runs go from his eight overs.
He removed the prolific Dave Penny for 15 and this was an important wicket to get as he had made four league centuries this season already.
Staplegrove consolidated with Rob Prescott’s 42 – the highest score of their innings – but the spin trick worked again for Wellington as Paul Short, Richard Das Neves and Rob Moysey ran through a team who had come into the game with the same sort of run of form as Wellington were on.
84-3 became 100-9 as Das Neves (4-33) and Moysey (3-8) spun the ball hard and far and this undid Staplegrove in a dramatic fashion.
Credit too to Paul Short who delivered 12 successive overs, taking 1-37, and laid the base for his spin colleagues to go on from.
A last wicket stand of 28 between Tom Pantling and Matt Dunn held Wellington up for a while, but Moysey ended proceedings with five balls to go.
Wellington had caught well with Alec Short taking three catches behind the stumps and the outfielding been generally of a good quality.
A break for rain had lopped ten overs off the game and consequentially Wellington had only 35 overs to make the 129 required to win.
Rob Moysey and Mark Salter added 20 at the top of the Wellington innings before Moysey was caught in the gully a he tried to cut the ball, but ended up not going through with the shot.
Salter hit a flurry of boundaries before he speared one high in the air and was caught by keeper Gareth Parsons and at 36-2 Wellington needed to reassess the situation.
Richard Das Neves and Thom Trott reacted to this in an aggressive manner as Das Neves crashed 42 in no time at all and with Trott playing the anchor role Wellington had wrested the initiative back.
Stuart Currall joined Trott, who made an excellent 43no, and they all but sealed Wellington 1st XI’s seventh win of 2005 and although two wickets were lost in getting to the required total, the maximum 35 points were obtained by the Red and Blacks, enabling them to leap frog Staplegrove in the League Standings.