After the cancellation of nearly all last week’s pre-season games and a complete washout at the weekend, the sun shone on Wednesday 20 April and the 2016 Cricket Season finally kicked off with victories for all three senior sides in the traditional curtain-raiser fixtures against Queen Elizabeth’s, Barnet.

The 2nd and 3rd XIs won comprehensively by 10 and 9 wickets respectively.  Both sides contain strong bowling attacks, who did their jobs on the day, restricting the opposition to totals of 52 for 9 and 91 for 9 respectively, targets easily reached by our batsmen.

The top game of the day, however, proved a much closer affair, as it usually does. In the end, thanks to a fine unbroken partnership of 53 for the 7th wicket between Naresh Rasakulasuriar (34*) and Charlie Mack (24*), who was batting at no.8 in the order after injuring his hand while fielding, Habs prevailed in a low-scoring contest on a difficult surface, thus preserving our unbeaten run against QEB stretching back over at least quarter of a century.

Earlier the opposition’s star player, Kush Patel, scored a fine half century as QEB reached 68 for 1 after 17 overs, before an excellent spell from off-spinner Hugo Murphy (3 for 14) with good support from captain Ian Harris (2 for 10) slowed the run-rate and brought Habs back into the game.  QEB eventually posted 107 for 9 in their 20 overs, perhaps 30 runs below par for the wicket but still a tricky target for our batsmen.

In reply, despite the early loss of Alex Willis, we made a reasonable start with Harris (25) looking to be in good form before falling to a good catch at short-extra.  However, the dismissal of Jordan Urban triggered a collapse from 50 for 2 to 57 for 6 in just three overs.  Another wicket at this point and we would have been in serious trouble, but sensible batting from Rasakulasuriar and Mack rescued the situation and by the end both were striking the ball cleanly, hitting five boundaries each.  We reached our target with 8 overs to spare and now look forward to the Berkhamsted fixture this coming Saturday.