3s pick up vital win

The 3s travelled to fellow strugglers Banstead and needed to secure points to go ahead of their oppo. Having lost the toss and being put in on the hottest day of the year the Stags were mightily relieved.

Nick Gavin-Brown and Charlie Poutney opened up and started carefully against some good seam bowling. NGB was the first wicket down being clean bowled. Rob Wint joined Poutney who together put on over 70 runs to lift the score to 95 before Wint was bowled by a googly. Tom Culhane joined Poutney and kept the score ticking along. Wickets fell on occassions but Poutney held firm until he'd reached 90 and unluckily played on. Leonard joined in and scored a quick 30 and the Stags reached 221 ao in the last of their 50 overs.

The reply started well and thankfully in the cool of the day, with Nikhil Waugh clean bowling the Banstead opener, and Alex Culhane securing the second wicket cheaply smartly caught by the Welsh-wizard Parkinson behind the stumps.

Then came a long and overly patient partnership, with the scoring rate needed to be near 6 an over the 3rd wicket parntership at second drinks were miles off the pace. After drinks wickets started to tumble with Will Cuhane picking up 3 and Tom Culhane getting the last two wickets in consecutive balls to finish with 5 in all, and take Ashtead off the foot of the table with a well secured 10 points! Credit to Nick Williams who bowled an excellent spell of 10 overs for just 18 runs in the middle of the innings to restrict the Banstead 3rd wicket partnership.