Despite some early morning showers, a very young Bashley Rydal 5’s (Richard and myself excluded) arrived at the beautiful setting of Farley Cricket Club which is currently celebrating its 150 year. Winning the toss and against previous experience, Bashley decided to field. The welcome return of Will Logsden (9-0-37-1) opened up with Daniel Hart (6-0-21-0) and kept the runs tight considering the short boundaries on either side of the ground. Our spin trio was then unleashed on the Farley batsmen, with Cavan Davey (9-1-35-1) and Sam Presland (10-0-62-3) both bowling beautifully to very some experienced players, with the highlight being a lovely flighted delivery from Sam bringing the Farley opener A Stagg (who had scored 80) down the pitch, who duely missed the ball, for Jack Harris to whip off the bails for a good stumping. Toby Mills, making his debut, then bowled three good overs and was unlucky to have a catch put down in the deep which would have given him a deserved wicket in his first game. Our fielding is much improved from our opening game, and Toby certainly contributed to this on Saturday. However we do continue to make some basic mistakes in our ground fielding, which if we can reduce or iron out, will make us much more competitive in the future. That being said, a very good bowling performance limited Farley 2s to 214 in their 42 overs, which if we started, well was certainly within reach. However our unfortunate run of golden ducks continued, where for the fourth game in a row a new batsmen has been facing a hat trick ball! In fact in this one that occurred twice! Maybe the tea was too good? Farley’s Ed Stagg, an under 14 Wiltshire player, certainly was as he bowled beautifully taking the first 4 wickets by the end of the 9th over, by which time we were 16 for 4. He finished with figures of 10-3-34-5, a match winning performance with the ball and he also seemed to be everywhere in the field! Well done to him. There then followed a period of rebuilding with some good partnerships between the Captain and Julian Hood (16) who put on 34, and then with Sam Shean (21) putting on 90 for the 7th wicket, and despite the poor start, there was the tease of an unlikely victory, with us needing 40 off the last 5 overs. However when the Captain fell for 97 in the 38th over, the game was all but won by Farley, and despite some hefty blows by Cavan Davey (9), Daniel Hart (13 no) and Will Logsden (4 no) we ended the game at 190-9, 25 runs short of victory. This was a very enjoyable game played at a beautiful ground, in good spirits, and ended with a beer in the bar afterwards with the opposition. Just how village cricket should be. Well done to both teams, and particularly our young guns, who are gaining experience by the week.