Vice Captain stood up into the full role in Rob Bastin's absence & lead his side to a fine victory with the season's best bowling figures & the first five for of the season to boot. Matt Holliday also stood in & up with great effect & every catchable chance was taken in what amounted to one of the best fielding displays.

On a day with an ominous amount of cloud around Saturday Captain James Gleadow stayed true to form off the pitch by showing he was a useless tosser and Pacific were dispatched into the field. The Priory Park openers got off to a bit of a flyer with the more aggressive of their openers pouncing on anything remotely short and wasn't bad hitting over the top either, yet much of the time our lads actually bowled pretty well, certainly Dave Morahan lad bowled tidily enough without getting the wicket he deserved. Naveej also bowled some pearlers that missed the edge or the stumps and unsettled the batsmen quite regularly without getting the breakthrough.

After 10 overs it was looking pretty ominous as Priory reached 72-0 and it was time for the captain to enter the fray along with James Smith. They duly put more pressure on the batsmen who then start scampering risky singles. One of them hits a ball to cover and Webley swoops in and with a quick and accurate release he shies at the stumps and strikes. The better of the two batsmen was a yard short by most peoples reckoning yet the umpire at that end was a few metres behind the stumps and not at the side like he should have been. Even so he should have spotted that the guy was well short.

Ironically a couple of overs or so later another risky single, another direct hit, this time by Gleadow himself and he sent the other guy on his way and ironically of course this one was a good deal more dubious. A guilty conscience on the part of the ump? Maybe. However Gleadow is soon in on the act himself and picks up a couple of wickets slowing down their momentum considerably and soon the middle order seems to keel over. He is helped along the way by ‘safe hands’ Hollman pouncing a couple at gully. Gleadow would end the day with a 5 fer in which Webley also gets in on the act with a quality catch at short cover. Korgaonkar came on to replace ‘steady Eddy Smith with his chinamen and is reasonably accurate although a fairly standard off drive leaves Gleadow bewildered as Arsene Wenger like he didn't see it. In his second over after a couple of pies he settles down and later on in the over the dangerous opening bat who had continued to strike boundries tries to go ariel but holes out in the deep to a decent ball and a good running catch from ‘steady Eddy Smith’!

Korgaonkar is able to put some pressure on the lower middle order and Hollman adds to his catch tally with a caught and bowled and takes another wicket to leave Priory on the brink. Korgaonkar takes a second wicket with Hollman again pouching a catch at point, a good position for Korgaonkar as he gained a considerable amount of bounce. Priory are all out for 164.

In reply Pacific start poorly losing both Croft and Roy within the first 10 overs for just over 30 runs. However our middle order soon click into gear and get up with the rate. Unfortunately after looking well set our Webley then gets a nick and it is 3 down with not a great deal of firepower left in the line-up. But never fear Hollman was here, after 4 catches and 2 wickets he nudges and then flicks his way often timing the ball very well towards the mid wicket fence and a few late cuts of considerable elan. He is joined then by our wicket keeper batsmen Holliday who was buoyed by taking a quality catch standing up to our Gleadow earlier. Much to Holliday’s merriment Priory decide to have a deep set field for Hollman but have a rather aggressive fielding unit saving the single for him. Of course he picks his gaps nicely and plays some very good shots including one where off a spinner he has enough time to swivel round and smack it past a gobsmacked keeper, who was almost literally smacked in the gob. Very quickly what looked an imposing target became one that we were likely to get even though their opening bowlers came back to finish their spells.

The problem was that apart from those two and a useful spinner the rest weren’t really threatening enough and despite their opening bowling cleaning up Holliday 3 short of what would have been a very good 50 in a partnership of over 100 and Pacific got home very comfortably although Hollman will feel a little bit miffed he didn't cross that line on what was an outstanding day for him personally. This was also partly due to the fact that Smith came in and smacked a few boundaries very quickly to cap a good performance from Pacific and an outstanding one for Hollman.

XI is Peter Hollman, Justin Roy, Jon Webley, Matt Callender, James Smith, Vincent Croft, Naveej Vinod, Aroon Korgaonkar, James Gleadow*,Matt Holliday+, David Morahan.

Meet at ground by 12.30pm. Please provide vegetarian tea for 2