3s come out 2nd best to Wimbledon

The 3s played there first game up at Box Hill, the ground looked stunning as usual and took on a typically strong Wimbledon team.

Losing the toss, Ashtead batted first and started well with a new partnership of Gale and Mason opening the batting. But with the score on 36 Gale was the first to go clean bowled by the impressive 16 year old Whipple. Parkinson playing in his 2nd game for the season walked soon afterwards as Mason smashed the ball back straight and the bowler touched it onto his stumps, a very unlucky way to be run out!

Wint and Mason tried to rebuild and were particularly brutal on anything short, but Mason fell LBW for 27. Reed joined the skipper and the pair put on 80 taking the total up to 130 before Reed was bowled by Whipple in his second spell.

Wickets fell at regular intervals as our tail was soon exposed, and when Wint fell for 63 with the score on 147, and two more on the same score a low score on a belting track looked on the cards.

Caprano-Wint and Elburn played sensibly and put on 26 for the 9th wicket until Elburn was LBW, and the final wicket fell on 174 - below the par by at least 50 runs.

Wimbledon started quickly and punished Ashtead's seamers when anything remotely wide or short was bowled and it took the inclusion of leg-spin from Caprano-Wint to get the breakthrough in his first over having the open Van Bylevelt caught by Gale for 47, the score was 92 in only the 17th over. Caprano-Wint picked up his second victim having the unconvincing no 3 caught behind sharply by Parkinson but meanwhile their opener and captain Nolan was batting nicely and reached his 50 before the impressive Hill had him caught behind for 52.

Wimbledon needed 60+ runs sill to win and their no 5 came out with his 'adidas t-shirt' on rather than playing shirt (take a look at the picture) and the 3s became hopeful. Another wicket fell as Hill picked up his second and the Stags started to show some more urgency lacking in the field earlier on.

But even the returning pace of Culff couldn't stop the inevitable as an uncharacteristically weaker Wimbledon team hit the winning runs with 15 overs still left.

Another lose for the 3s, but yet again we did not score enough runs and were punished for any wayward bowling on a good surface.

Next week we host Sunbury at Box Hill again and hope for a better performance and we currently sit rock bottom of the table!

The scorecard can be found at - http://ashtead.play-cricket.com/view_results_details?id=11874168