Rickmansworth 1st XI’s early season good form seems to have deserted them as they lost by 121 runs to local rivals West Herts. The match started well for the Park Road outfit as some accurate early bowling kept the scoring rate low and combined with regular wickets had the innings in the balance at 93/5. However, not for the first time this season, Rickmansworth seemingly fell asleep during the middle of the innings allowing the 5th and 6th wickets for West Herts to rattle up 100 further runs and enable West Herts to compose 202/9 off their 50 overs. Phil Riddleston and Marc Robinson were the pick of the bowlers with 3-39 and 2-30 respectively.

Requiring only just over 4 an over to win, in perfect batting conditions, the game was set for a good second half. However West Herts didn’t read the script and used their 3 front-line spinners to great effect in dismissing Rickmansworth for a disappointing 81 all out, with 18 overs still left in the game.

As a result Rickmansworth slip to 6th in the table and now have a must-win game against 7th place Preston due this Saturday, in order to get their season back on track.

The Second XI, conversely had a much better day with the bat, racking up 263 for 5 against Frogmore, their highest score since June 2009. The main contributors were Maz Shah with 73, Majid Khan with 51 and Raz Khan 44, though all the batsmen scored 24 or more in a good all-round performance.

Frogmore had one of the strongest batting line-ups in the League and they kept up with the rate throughout, despite Majid Khan, Amit Pau and Bobby Chowdhry all taking a brace of wickets. Needing 7 off the final over, Ricky kept the bowling tight and were hugely disappointed to see the winning 2 runs come off an unfortunate misfield off the final ball, especially with the last batting pair at the crease.

The 3rd XI came out a clear second-best against a Potten End 1st XI who have clearly been placed in the wrong starting division, coming from the Bucks Premier League in 2015. Potten End had wracked up over 300 in their last two innings and so skipper Matt Atkins chose to bat first. However the plan backfired as Ricky were all out for 86 in 36 overs of intense fast bowling. With the ball, Ricky fared little better, although 16 year old Neel Kalhan did well on his return to the pitch after exams, taking 2 of the 3 wickets to fall as Potten End cruised to victory on 87/3

So it was left to the Rickmansworth 4th team to shine some promising light on the weekends activities as they dismissed Radlett 5th XI for 45 to set up a first win of the season. 16 years olds Jack Lee and Joe Monk returned club best figures of 5 for 13 (Lee) and 3 for 10 (Monk) in skittling out a similarly young Radlett side.

Rickmansworth eased to their target in the 11th over with Yogesh Parekh on his Ricky League debut making a steady 22 not out to secure the win and move 2 places up the table.