Hertford 2s humbled by Northchurch

Hertford travelled to Northchurch after 2 good wins feeling full of confidence but knowing that the opposition were likely to pose a significantly sterner test than in previous weeks. Jamie Riddle had the audacity to lose the toss for the first time this year, Northchurch decided to have a bat.

Hertford opened with Tony Rhodes and Adam Marnoch and it was immediately apparent that the overnight rain had made a slight impression on the wicket. Both bowlers did a great job of sticking to their lines and only the rare loose ball was punished – just as it felt like the Northchurch openers had weathered the storm, Rhodes struck bowling Liveing round his legs and soon after Marnoch also struck having Bexson caught at mid-off.

This was just-reward for a good spell of bowling from both openers, Olly Folland and Chris Thompson replaced them at their respective ends and Thompson was immediately into his stride bowling very tightly. Batsman McGiffen was looking composed, Gayton at the other end looked completely lost and Thompson eventually put him out of his misery. This was the order of play for the rest of the Northchurch innings - McGiffen whacked it, everyone else tried not to screw-up.

The most successful partner McGiffen had was in Barry who, despite inexplicably falling over after every-other ball, managed to do a good job of giving the Aussie the strike – Northchurch were now looking at a very big total. Riddle and the Hertford fielders were doing their best to keep McGiffen off-strike and only once Max Lawrance had removed Barry was there an opportunity to keep the score south of 250. Folland was showing all his experience… by bowling from the end with the long-boundary, but was doing a great job. He was picking up regular wickets which included a sensational one-handed caught-and-bowled and massive LBW appeal for a potential hat-trick.

Unfortunately Hertford had visited McGiffen at his most Australian and despite Folland’s bowling from one end, nothing could prevent the glut of sixes being hit at the other end where there was a tiny-boundary. The end product was McGiffen smashing an annoyingly chanceless 154* out of a total of 240. Hertford considered this a good effort considering the situation they were in after 30 overs, the fielding was solid throughout and Folland finished with 5 wickets whilst Thompson, Rhodes and Marnoch bowled very well earlier in the day. The rest of the bowlers were largely powerless to prevent the short-boundary-onslaught from McGiffen, and shouldn’t get too hung-up over their figures in the scorebook.

George Pavey and Jamie Riddle walked out, and after 5 overs the game was looking easy – both openers had blitzed several boundaries and the chase was well and truly on. Riddle then got dropped 3 times in one over and this set the tone for the remainder of the innings. Pavey (20) was bowled by a cracker (McGiffen again), Chandler followed shortly after and despite a short renaissance from Riddle and Stevenson (30) the former was feeling the pressure of a nose-diving run-rate and was caught at mid-off for 44, with the score now 77-3.

At this moment, your author considers not reciting the rest of the innings as it really does not get any less embarrassing. However, drawing inspiration from the confidence that this is the only time I will have to do so this year, I shall power on – 3 calamitous run-outs accounted for batsman’s 4, 5 and 6. The tidy bowling from both ends ensured that the rest of the lower-order fell cheaply and the only thing that sparred Hertford from a dry fisting was the cameo-induced-lubricant applied by Lawrance (15) and Rhodes (13) at the back-end of the innings.

Hertford were all-out for a pathetic 159 on a good pitch. Batting lessons need to be learnt; although there were flashes of good batting and minor recoveries the 2nd XI batsman need to step it up. It’s not all doom-and-gloom though, Hertford somehow went up one place to third in the league and play top team Redbourn at home this coming weekend – which should provide the ideal test for Hertford to start anew!