Portsmouth & Southsea Cricket Club

A "nearly" season saw us follow last years title with a very creditable second place.

Two tight defeats, the first to deserving winners Waterlooville, might have gone our way if I had coached more forcefully from the sideline and the second, against Fareham, was due to our getting the leagues standout batter back in too soon!

For the second consecutive season we took the most wickets of all the sides in the division and this time were proud to be the only side not to drop a batting point all season. Our batting was driven in the main by Harlan (224 runs), Ollie (220) and Daniel C (205), all averaging over 100. It's virtually unheard of to have 3 players in the 200's and the boys fill the  2nd, 3rd and joint 4th spots in the leagues listings. They were well supported by Daniel T who was unbeaten 4 times as we watched his confidence rightly grow game by game. Henry too enjoyed a maiden retirement in our top score while Will was ever reliable and will be the man we'll build next years challenge around. Of the boys that played less frequently Harry D-M and Alex bought urgency to the batting and Kyle played an excellent hand managing to retire in his only innings.

With the ball Kyle topped our averages thanks to 2 wickets in his two games and Alex too grabbed both a catch and wicket in his only outing. Dan C followed his outdoor exploits by again finishing top of our wickets column, his off spinning F&G (flight and guile) won 7 scalps. Harlan was too quick for many with 5 wickets, both Dan T (4 wickets) and Henry (3) regularly bowled really well to ensure the pressure was applied to win us run outs too. The bowling performance of the year though came from Will (4 wickets) who's ripping leggies turned Sarisbury inside out with 3 for 9. In the field we held most of our catches (Harlan took most with 3), were always in the game for run-outs (evenly spreading the 9 taken) and Ollie's gloves had a top season with 10 stumpings plus a couple of catches - always standing up.

Well played all the boys and many thanks to all who supported us from the galleries. Thanks too to Mark P for umpiring and scoreboarding on occasion and particularly to Tony R for keeping the book which is always a challenge in the frenetic exchanges.

Now all that remains is for us to look forward with confidence to a great outdoor season - bring on the sun......