Sevenoaks Vine 3rds traveled to Belvedere on a sunny but breezy day. The wicket looked decent enough and having won the toss Poole elected to bat first. Will Peters & Tom Harvey made a steady start before Peters departed for 7, bringing Vinnie Kokkilligarda to the crease. They batted well against some decent bowling, being assisted by some variable bounce, before Vinnie departed for 19 with the score 75/2 after 25 overs. Pulkit Verma joined Harvey, but Harvey was soon out to the leg spinner for 35 leaving us 78/3. Hilton Henderson joined the action and with overs running out was keen to give the innings a boost but he soon departed for 4. Jack Masding joined Pulkit and they started adding valuable runs before Pulkit was out LBW for 19. Satvik Kansal came in but with only 5 overs left he was keen to move the score on but departed for 1. Poole joined the action but soon departed for 2. Unfortunately Siddhant Shankar was run out for 0, Rob Thomas bowled for 0 as was Saihaj Bhathal. We needed the tail to wag but it didn’t, all out for 119 from 38.4 overs. Jack Masding left stranded for a fine 18 n.o. Matthew George was the stand out bowler for Belvedere taking 4-9 from 8.4 overs.

Still 119 has been a winning score before and we knew if we bowled well and took our chances we’d have a chance. Harvey & Kensal opened up and soon applied some pressure and Kensal took the first wicket in his 2nd over, a fine catch from Saihaj Bhathal. In his next over Satvik took an incredible 3 wickets (we won’t mention the hat trick ball) and Belvedere were rocking at 15-4. The Belvedere batsmen didn’t panic and steadied the ship, seeing off the opening spells of Harvey & Kensal. This brought the dual spin attack of Siddhant Shankar & Saihaj Bhathal to the proceedings and Saihaj was unfortunate not to break the partnership when a difficult chance behind went begging. At drinks Belvedere we’re 64-4 and we knew we needed to break this partnership. Hilton Henderson was introduced to the attack and the change nearly worked but Jack Masding was unable to take the chance that came his way. Poole brought himself on & struck in his 2nd over taking the much needed 5th wicket leaving Belvedere at 86-5. Henderson eventually got his deserved wicket making the score 107-6 and despite the batsmen playing & missing an awful lot they reached their target in the 37th over. For Belvedere Matthew George capped a fine game carrying his bat for 46 n.o.

A decent game with runs hard to come by and ultimately we were 20-25 runs short.