Reed flourish in the rain

Match Report: Reed vs Hoddesdon
Hoddesdon 2’s travelled to Reed on Saturday for their 7th fixture of the season and were looking to keep their 100% away win record intact. With gloomy skies surrounding the ground it was at first very unlikely that a full game would be played. However, after only a couple of breaks for rain the weather held off and the game was to be reduced by 11 overs for each side. Hoddesdon batted first with in form Fryers and Animal opening. However both batsman were dismissed early on both being bowled for 10 and 6 respectively. Gandon joined the crease with Angelini and were playing well and seemed comfortable until Angelini was bowled by a peach of a delivery, similar to Fryers’ dismissal, for 4. Shaun Brown was next in and recovered excellently along with Gandon both reaching 50’s. Both were playing flamboyant innings with some excellent shots and Brown even managed to hit a six with a little help from the fielder who tried to catch it. Gandon was then dismissed for 79 trying to go big and Brown fell later on for 76. The rest of the order were going all out in order to increase the total; however all were short lived with Stafford and Sturdy departing for 8 each. Hoddesdon eventually finished on 204-7 after their 42 overs and set their sights on a couple of early wickets when they came back out to field.

Sturdy and Cuffaro opened the bowling for Hoddy but neither could get the crucial early breakthrough with bad balls being punished by openers Frenay and Johnson. Captain Lee changed the bowling, putting on Maughan and Mason. However, the bad balls were all too consistent and with the constant rotation of the strike between the openers, Hoddy found it difficult to create pressure. Both openers reached 50 until Johnson was out LBW from the bowling of Mason in an unfortunate manner. Frenay was eventually dismissed by the bowling of Fryers who picked up 2 wickets in his 6 over spell. The match was still tight, however, after his 82 runs and 1 expensive over from Mason, the required run rate dropped dramatically for Reed and they finished the game with 19 balls remaining with Ward scoring 32 off 17 balls.

Another disappointing result for Hoddesdon means that the next few games are crucial for them to win to be challenging for promotion at the end of the season and Hoddy will look to go back to winning ways at Lowfield this Saturday against Wheathampstead.