Finally, a beautiful sunny day for our last home match of the season. Stu was captain for the day and continuing in the best traditions of this season, lost the toss, but surprisingly Gestingthorpe decided to insert the Mighty Bures, and we duly took full advantage.

This turned out to be a game principally of 3 Erith’s, although there were a number of other impressive and significant contributions.

The Chairman and Max W were invited to open the batting, and after a certain amount of scrabbling and scraping, eked out a reasonable opening stand to set up a spectacular display of hitting thereafter. First Olly T (31) and Charlie E (59) set about the bowling with gusto, with 4’s and 6’s being regularly despatched to all parts of the ground. They were followed by Captain Stu (29), Giles H the Colonel (17), James E (55) and Kieran Connelly (46), with the scorebook looking more like a small boy’s game of Howzat, where the dice got stuck on the 6 and 4. It should be noted that James E recorded his third successive score over 50 in a row, a fine achievement in anyone’s book. In the end Bures reached a massive 287, and it was with considerable confidence in a victory that we settled down to a sumptuous tea, supplied by Jess and her mum.

However, things didn’t all go completely to plan once we started bowling. George E kept reasonable control from one end, taking 2 good wickets for 36, but the other end went for 58 off the first 6 overs, and there were a few concerns creeping in. Jonty Lecompte, their star batsman was smashing it to all corners, and for a brief period it looked just possible that he might win it single handedly. However, the Chairman bowled a few tight overs to bring the scoring rate back down, and then Captain Stu and who else, but Charlie E did the rest. Once Stu had removed the dangerous Jonty, Charlie took a “Michelle” in quick time, and it was left to Max W to finish things off. Victory by 80 runs in the end, and once again a highly satisfactory result.