Pacific’s frontier men crossed the boundary & set up base in Hackney Cricket Club’s headquarters in Hackney Downs. The sunshine & warmth was never-ending but only one man, Transport for London employee, James Smith, failed to arrive having gone first to Victoria Park & then losing his way to Mare Street. He was later to find his index finger but more of that later. Kurt Rademaker’s 8.35 am withdrawal due to hangover let Adam Long back in but other than that Captain Darryl Roberts was prepared.

Despite the usual whining from the batters when Roberts chose to insert, his decision was fully vindicated as he later had to call upon his part time bowlers to induce a declaration, having found he found that despite beating the bat or occasionally lofting inadvertently into vacant space, Chat’s batting, fronted by Gary Horsman & left hander Geoff, was as resilient as it had even been & his recognised bowlers reamined thwarted.

Over an hour after the start all rounder Jon Webley made the breakthrough clean bowling Geoff but Gary’s new partner Darryl Christie dominated the innings thereafter. Shayne Rees picked up 2 wickets with a caught & bowled & eventually seeing Christie caught by Hollman on the cover boundary thereby denying Christie a 6 & his half century. Rees not only spoiled Christie’s day but Guy Wiehahn too dropping 2 difficult chances at mid on. Wiehahn did curtail Judith Carter’s determined innings when the effervescent Charlie David stumped her [The squat South African bowler's only wicket of the season - shameless! - Ed].

One other notable was John Green picking up his 1st wicket for several years here on his 2005 debut.

With a heavy & still moist outfield, Pacific had done well to keep the ball dry, but the outfield was still slow. No partnership really took hold until Charlie Davids was joined by The Run Factory AKA Jon Webley (691 runs to date, incl 3 hundreds, 6 Fifties, & currently topping the batting averages with 46.07). Needless to say it was a match winning partnership & when Jon was run out backing up too far, no one would have known how either of these 2 would have been out if at all.

A fine day, topped off by a good win & as the sides repaired to the Three Sisters PH as the temperature dropped suddenly, local resident & wag Nigel Wilkinson said “Hackney where the sun goes down & the crack dealers come out”.

XI:- Peter Hollman, Shayne Rees, Darryl Roberts*, Guy Wiehahn, Jon Webley, John Green, James Gleadow, Matt Callender, James Smith, Charlie David+ & Adam Long.

UPDATE 5/10 Peter, We will provide tea. There are changing facilities where we can also take tea. >