My first season as 2nd XI captain started off not quite as I had wanted it to with defeat in a friendly game away to Caterham. Results soon picked up though with our first league match against Chiswick & Latymer, in which we pulled off a comfortable win. Runs from James Knill (61), Himesh Patel (52) and myself (42) contributed to a total of 265. This left the opposition with no choice but to bat aggressively and thanks to some straight bowling we bowled out all 10 wickets for 185, myself returning figures of 4 for 29

Our next three games proved us to be slightly out of our league. Two of the games were against an extremely well-organised British Airways outfit; the other was against the previous year’s champions Worcester Park. The latter game was a close contest with Ashford being bowled out for 155, Ian McAllan (39) and Dan Rose (35) the top-scorers. Faced with some good, disciplined bowling Worcester Park crept to their target with only eight balls to spare.

Our first game against British Airways was played at home and was nothing short of poor. We were bowled out for 83 after only 21 overs, myself getting the only real runs of the day with 43*. The visitors chased down our score for the loss of only two wickets and within 23 overs! The return away leg came the following week and was even more disastrous and somewhat comical. Batting first our innings lasted only 10.3 overs and closed on 27 all out. NOT GOOD! The hosts scored the runs in a speedy 3.5 overs. To keep our hopes up, we decided to play a friendly 20/20
game to see if we could get our own back. But we failed in this as well!

With all of our other games being abandoned to the weather or conceded, we completed our last match on 20th July. This proved to be a one man show on the part of the opposition which had among its ranks a young overseas Aussie who smashed 209* and propelled their total to 353. This pretty much killed the game, which was disappointing and demotivating for the Ashford team. Despite this our chase got off to a solid start thanks to James Knill (54) and Himesh Patel (64) andour spirits were starting to lift until they dismissed us for a respectable 187, which we felt in any other game would have almost secured victory! Overall, not a season to be too pleased with but certainly one we can all learn from as individuals.