Sidmouth 2nds made their annual summer holiday visit to Paignton and, unfortunately, found themselves on the end of their annual beating as Paignton belied their league position with a comfortable five-wicket victory, writes Fionn Wardop.

Skipper Matt Hewer won the toss and, by popular request, opted to bat first on a decent Paignton wicket. But Sidmouth crawled to 82 for 5 from the first 32 overs against some consistent Paignton bowling.

Paignton’s bowlers did a good job in keeping the ball on one side of the wicket enabling their skipper, Tim Ward, to set tight fields putting the onus onto Sidmouth to work out more innovative methods of scoring. Sidmouth failed to meet this challenge until Charlie Miles joined Dan Powell to add 57 at better than a run a ball for the sixth wicket.

Miles made 42 in a lovely exhibition of clean hitting, the highlight of which was four consecutive 4s from the bowling of former first teamer Mike Pedley.

When Miles departed, bowled by Rob Shergold, the pick of Paignton’s bowlers, his good work was continued by Dom Bess who recreated the good form he showed at last week’s Bunbury Festival in making 31 in even time. Bess and Powell added a further 55 for the seventh wicket with some delightful shots, the highlight of which was an amazing inside out six from Powell who danced around an off spinning ball and drove it cleanly over cover point and beyond the rope.

To the credit of Miles, Powell and Bess Sidmouth set a reasonable target of 209 but Paignton made it easily.

and 3 good spin bowlers, Sidmouth were optimistic of a positive result, but it wasn’t to be as Paignton’s top order batsmen batted confidently and took advantage of some ordinary Sidmouth bowling and fielding to chase down the total with 5 overs to spare.

The Paignton innings wasn’t without incident and Sidmouth spinners Dom Bess and Charlie Dibble caused their usual trouble in reducing them to 120 for 4. At this point Tim Ward strode to the crease, and whacked the first 2 balls he faced for 6, shoving back the Sidmouth field and easing life for himself and his partner, Callum Stanley, who made 49. Ward went on to make an unbeaten 55 in fine style and led his team over the line to a deserved victory.

Sidmouth take 7 points from the encounter and the only silver lining to this particular cloud was that league rivals Exeter only managed a losing draw at Plympton; a result that takes them to the top of the table, but only by 2 points and with all still to play for.

Man of the match and this week’s Jazzy recipient was Dan Powell.