Once again Haverhill 2nds were on their travels to the village of Nacton near Ipswich . On a grey , windy and showery day Haverhill won the toss and elected to field first . Skipper Wilkins and Steve Fox opened the bowling against some aggressive batting as both Openers attacked anything off line and the score raced to 30 in 6 overs . Wilkins got the breakthrough and followed it up with another wicket with the score on 37-2. Tidy bowling by Joey Kettle (1-22) and Dan Webb ( 2-23) kept the scoring in check as wickets tumbled and Nacton found themselves at 100-8 at 34 overs . Steve Saville bowled 6 tidy overs to take 1-12 and the returning Fox (2-51) then got the ninth wicket with the score on 118. Things then got away from Haverhill as the last 5 overs were despatched for 43 runs and a final total of 163-9 .

  Skipper Wilkins had to open the innings with the Aggressive Sam Hartshorn as the other Openers were unavailable . Hartshorn set about the bowling and the scoreboard had moved to 30 before he fell to a very good catch on the boundary . Greg Street joined his Skipper and against some very good bowling the score moved steadily to 60 off 15 overs before Street (15) skied a catch . Things then went steadily downhill as Savage ( 2) , Ketteridge (4) , Kettle (1) , Fox(4) and Rinaldi ( 1) were soon out to catches , all well taken but  a bit careless in the circumstances .

  Wilkins had moved crab-like onwards as he desperately needed some support at the other end . He was joined by his 14 year old son Ben with the score at 74-7 and the scoring rate had slowed to a trickle . Ben batted confidently as he managed to put on 19 runs with his Dad before a tired looking shot from the Skipper led to another fine catch at midwicket . Ben batted well and was even sledged  but took it all in his stride . He fell attempting to hook a ball for a fine 13 runs which considering what had gone on before was a fine effort . Dan Webb ( 8 no) and Saville managed to take the score to 110 all out but it was a poor batting effort really .

  It was very similar to the match at Melton ,  Batsman threw their wickets away by hitting the ball in the air and giving 10 catches to our opponents . Having said that Nacton played very well and out played us in every department of the game . Apparently they don’t usually field as well as they did on Saturday but it was good enough for us . We must learn to battle harder when the going gets tough and value our wickets . We did let them get too many runs and I must take the blame for that with the bowling changes at the death . This week with have another tough match against unbeaten Brightlingsea 2nds and with Players returning from unavailability and First team calls team selection will be interesting this week . 

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