On a wicket with variable bounce, Tom Thorpe and Rob Lankester tamed the visitors’ opening bowlers in a stand of 63 until Lankester, nursing a badly bruised thumb played on for 21. Thorpe continued plaguing the bowlers until he skied a catch to the alert Akenfield on the boundary, departing for another entertaining knock of 69 containing 10 boundaries. An all too familiar middle order collapse followed until Max Sanderson (33) and Tom Greaves (20) wrested back control to steer the innings to a respectable 188 in total.
The word at tea was that it was an above par score on that wicket and this soon became apparent as Julien Fynn and Jack Tidey, back from injury, tore into Letchworth’s batting line up. Fynn, the King of Swing, had two victims in his first over. Tidey clean bowled the prolific Aussie run scorer Fred McClure for a duck. Indeed, at 8-4 all four batters fell without scoring. Tidey was rested after 5 overs with figures of 3-9, 4 of which were sliced off the outside edge. However, Fynn wasn’t finished as he decimated the tail, the last five wickets falling for 5 runs. His extraordinary analysis read 7.2-1-9-6. Ollie Johnson picked up a wicket too as Greaves took a one-handed catch behind the keeper. Only 11 runs were scored with a top score of 5, including that slice for 4, extras eclipsing them with 15. It was an astounding bowling performance.
Now Reed face another top-of-the-table clash away at St Albans next Saturday.