Aldbury, Aldenham, all the same? all out, all over...

Initial messages from the captain were confusing. "It's away at Aldbury" said Harry. "That's handy" we all said... but then no-one could recall ever playing at Aldbury before. Turns out that it was at Aldenham, with us being late replacements for their original opponents, Little Gaddesden. A mixture of 1st and second teamers, plus Dave "Pingu" Franklin in his first match for some seven years, gathered at the ground. Skipper-for-the-day Tom Moore won the toss and elected to bat. The opening bowlers proved very hard to get away, bowling with pace and accuracy (5 overs from the top end yielded only 2 runs!). Despite this, the openers managed to put on a stand of 54, thanks largely to Mike Gurney who was easily our top scorer with a well earned 61. Only Adam Hyland (24), Lol Geere (13) and Kieran Turner (11) provided any real support as we were dismissed for 134 with about 15 minutes still remaining until the scheduled tea break (this being a rare occasion for us, an old fashioned timed game rather than limited overs).
A splendid tea was had before we took the field knowing that it would be a tough ask to defend a total that was at least 30 short of what might be 'defendable'. Unfortunately, despite everyone's best efforts, we were not able to restrict the scoring in the same way that Aldenham had managed. The odd breakthrough was achieved, but not regularly enough and the hosts coasted to a fairly comfortable victory with overs to spare.

DG