The Willows won the toss and despite a bit of a sticky wicket, decided to bat first. It was looking like a great decision after Henry Wright and Paul Miller took us to 43 without loss after nine overs but the attack tightened their line and length and managed to bring the scoring rate back over the next period. Alex Reese broke the opening stand and from then on the going was a little tougher although at the 30 over mark we were still looking good for a score around the 250 mark. However, after Paul Miller was dismissed for 75 in the 33rd over, we just couldn’t get any strong momentum going. A late innings surge from Mark Reid and Chris Mugford did get the tally up to what was looking like a pretty decent score of 216 after the 50 overs.

Kelvin Scott’s medium-slow bowling was very effective on the sticky deck and he ended the innings with the exceptional figures of 6/35. He was ably supported by Alex Reese with 3/45.

The London NZ innings was destroyed early on with some attacking bowling from Ryan Burson and Chris Reid and two brilliant catches from Mario Williams and Dave Kelly behind the wicket. After nine overs they were reduced to 35 for 7 and Burson had his five wicket haul in the bank already. In saying this the London NZ XI managed to keep the scoring ticking over at a reasonable run rate despite the loss of early wickets and when James Dobson and Marty McGoldrick put together a 78 run partnership for the 9th wicket it did look like they were still in with an outside chance. However, when McGoldrick was dismissed the innings was quickly wrapped up for 164, a 52 run win for The Willows. Dobson finished unbeaten on 59 and Reid and Burson had figures of 4/29 and 5/30 respectively.