Due to the wet week the game was moved to the artificial wicket at Marewa Park with a slow and large outfield. With a strong wind coming in from one end HNCC won the toss and elected to bat. The top order struggled to master the conditions and with some accurate bowling from Taradale found themselves struggling at 26 for 5 and then 41 for 6. Once again it took the ‘mature head on young shoulders’ of Ross Rogan (38no) to knuckle down and try to take Havelock to a competitive total. He found willing partners in Sophie Pyott (11) who put on 36 runs with Rogan for the 7th wicket, and finally an unbroken partnership of 52 runs with Andy Reeves (25no) that allowed HNCC to finish on 129 for 7 after 40 overs and some sort of total to defend.
HNCC bowled very well to keep the pressure on the Taradale batsman with R Ross took 2 for 27 and S Pyott 2 for 29 from their full 8 overs spells. Unfortunately, the drizzle became pretty consistent after only 10 overs of the Taradale innings and the ball became increasingly like a bar of soap. Despite that Alex Philip and Guy Reeves also both completed their 8 over spells with some aggressive and accurate bowling in very tricky conditions and were unlucky to remain ‘wicketless’ although both conceded at less than 3 runs per over. Under normal conditions this would have made for a very interesting last 8 overs with Taradale still needing 40 runs. But with such a wet ball and only being 4 wickets down the game came to an inevitable conclusion with Taradale reaching 133 for 4 wickets with under 3 overs to go. Although the top order batting was a little disappointing it was however a really excellent effort in the field in difficult conditions and now leaves the HNCC 2nd Division side ‘symmetrically placed’ having won 3 and lost 3 from their first 6 games.