Strong Gale blows the grey clouds away.

Having being unavailable the previous week due to the unforeseen demands of another of his wife's milestone birthdays, the skipper returned to the rigours of league cricket with a win over a Normandy team, struggling in the league this year, an absolute necessity.

It is at this stage in the season, when selection meetings begin to become more enjoyable as the pool of players throughout the club increases with exams, University terms and Duke of Edinburgh challenges soon to be a distant memory. Unlike the higher XI's, the 4XI premiership has three relegation places rather than two so it is always in the back of our minds as in 4XI cricket being mid-table is normally only one loss away from the relegation zone.

So, as the day dawned to rain-filled drizzly skies, it was important that we won today. Now as an avid follower of the BBC weather forecast, I have learnt not to trust anything more than 24 hours ahead but the on the day forecast is normally pretty good. Today, it suggested that the rain would clear by eleven and we would be dry for the rest of the day. Now, you might have noticed I am on paragraph 3 and still have not mentioned any cricket yet. However, the forecast was instrumental in any potential decision whether to bat or bowl first if we had the choice. As usual, the sage that is Andy Storey was muttering "ROTB, ROTB" to himself and any teenagers who wanted to listen. For the uninitiated in Andy-speak this means Runs on the Board, ie bat first whatever. Whereas the skipper tries to think and analyse the scenario in more depth, hindsight has shown that, in this one area alone, Andy tends to be right.

So it was a great disappointment when Mark Rosser, the Normandy skipper, chose heads correctly, rendering all our careful analysis totally and completely irrelevant. He chose to bowl first, so we had to bat and Andy was happy.

So eventually we get on to the cricket. Sam Gale and Jordan Nichols opened the batting for the Stags and Jordan soon missed a straight one to be bowled for 2 by Tom Brennan. Ben Geddes, at the grand old age of 12, came to the crease and showed his natural flair and talent in building a patient and classy 20 before pulling a short one gently into midwicket's hands. Jake Martin making his 4th team debut, his mother having not arranged any tennis matches for him this weekend, showed that some of his father's insecurities are clearly genetic and was out second ball caught at slip wafting at one outside off-stump. At 54-3, Pete Sudell joined Sam and took the score through to 115 before Sudell skied one to cover totally contradicting his advice seconds earlier to Sam that he needed to keep his head down and keep the partnership going for another ten overs at least.

Sam by this stage was showing moments of true class and also moments of light headedness having some unnecessarily extravagant swishes outside offstump. However, the longer his innings went on the calmer he got and when 6th out for 81 with the score at 163, he had laid the foundations for a good total. By this time Ashit had come and gone for an entertaining, if unorthodox, 12 and this brought David Whiteley together with Patrick Murray to hopefully take the score forwards until a timely declaration.

The innings initially lost a bit of momentum as only five or so runs were added in the next 5 overs. This was primarily an indication of how difficult it was timing the ball on what was at a slower pitch than normal at Boxhill due to the rain over the last few days which demonstrated how good Sam's innings had been previously. All credit then to Patrick in particular who scored a very efficient 28 not out allowing the skipper to declare at 211-7.

Tea was taken and enjoyed by all, particularly the chocolate eclairs. The aforesaid skipper's wife had by this stage arrived for week two of her birthday celebrations with copious members of her family, had tea, and left. True commitment.

So, the challenge was now to bowl Normandy out. With Matt Whiteley racing in from the far end and bowling with real pace, there was genuine fear in the slips that he would find an edge. In 4XI cricket, the slip position is a refuge, indeed sanctuary from having to exert oneself in the field too much whilst the youngsters do the hard work. When the new ball is hitting the keepers gloves with some venom, you do begin to wonder whether it would be safer fielding somewhere else.

Fortunately, Matt decided to go route one and hit the stumps thus dismissing Ford for a duck. Gyan at the other end was soon in on the action getting Wellfare to pop one up to David Whiteley at short midwicket leaving Normandy at 10-2. Mark Rosser scored a solid 25 with a serious of powerful cuts and was looking ominous and the man to get out as he punished anything which was short with great aplomb.

By this stage, the opening pair had been replaced by the wily David Whiteley and Patrick Murray. Whiteley got Stuart Walter to snick one behind where Jordan Nichols took the catch and shortly afterwards Patrick took the key wicket of Rosser plumb LBW for 25 and then bowled Nick Cook for 4. At 58-5 we were probably through the best of the Normandy batting by now and it was a matter of extracting the rest on what was a benign pitch. With a small partnership developing between Phil Miles and Tom Brennan, the skipper changed things round a bit bringing Jake Martin and himself on, The change worked, and Jake was albeit a bit fortunate to get an LBW decision against Miles (note it was the Normandy umpire who gave him out!) and quickly followed with two more wickets to leave Normandy on 95-8.

At this stage, with Jake having just got two wickets in an over, the skipper was forced to remove him from the attack as under ECB rules he had reached his single spell limit. It was time to re-introduce a bit of pace again and Matt Whiteley returned to the attack at one end with Ben Geddes brought on at the other. The Normandy no 10, Alex Cook is a young batsman and Matt is quite quick. So it was a great delight to see Alex dispatch Matt to the cover boundary with a fierce drive first ball, a shot which gained great applause from both Normandy and the rest of the Stags. Shot of the day!

The end was nigh however, and with Ben picking up the no 10 caught by Pattrick Murray at mid on, it was in the next over that Matt castled the obdurate Brennan for 16 and the match was Ashtead's.

A solid performance based on a good team batting performance anchored by the superb Sam Gale. In the field, we were solid throughout and had enough bowling to win ultimately with some ease.