Wellington 2nd XI 251-7 – Winscombe 2nd XI 92
Wellington 2nd XI moved up to fifth in Division One of the Somerset League Reserves competition after safely seeing off bottom side Winscombe at home last Saturday by a massive 159 runs, thus completing the double over the Mendip side and with a game in hand on the rest of the division their thoughts are definitely on moving further up the table as they have six matches to play compared to most other teams having five.
Winscombe, who are having a torrid season, were delayed by traffic on the M5 and the match did not get going until 2.15pm and even then the visitors were forced to field with nine men to start with, so it came as no surprise that Richard Henwood opted to bat first on winning the toss and his batsmen made hay.
Trevor Brooks and Julian Jones had 22 on the ball in four overs with Brooks hitting three good boundaries before he hit a full toss to the leg side and was caught off of Mayne.
This brought Matt Colman to the wicket and he and Jones proceeded to grind Winscombe down as they added 187 for the second wicket with Jones hitting his second ton of the season against Winscombe as he crafted 139 to go with the 113no he hit away back in May.
He hit 21 fours and was in a fine groove.
Colman was the anchor for Jones’ exuberance and he played well for 64 with six fours.
The partnership was finally broken by Hoyle who bowled better than figures of 1-65 in 12 overs may suggest.
After Wellington got past 200 the bat was thrown and some wickets were lost, but the total was well in excess of what Winscombe were going to be able to make and 251-7 in 45 overs was what the Red and Blacks second string had posted by tea.
Rutherford with 5-34 profited with the ball late on for the visitors who were just glad to get into the changing room after their afternoon of toil and bother.
After such an arduous time in the field Winscombe’s early set backs with the bat was no surprise as they dipped to 9-4 with two wickets each for Richard Henwood and Adrian Lee – indeed Henwood was on a hat-trick.
Both returned figures of 2-8 and the damage was done.
James Webber collected the wicket of Mayne as he tried to hit the cover off the ball and was bowled, before some solidity was shown by Searle and Rutherford who made 23 and 25 respectively – they added 57 for Winscombe’s sixth wicket and had got their side to a fourth batting point when they fell away again, losing their last five wickets for just 12 runs as Chris Rudd and Bob Trott wrapped things up sharing the five wickets in question as Winscombe were all out for 92 in 33 overs.
Lee Nicol was quite outstanding in the field and deserves credit for this.
Wellington 2nd XI took a full 35 points and Winscombe 2nd XI 11 points and a visit to ninth placed Staplegrove next Saturday looms for Wellington now and they will be looking for another win to keep their climb up the table going.
