Well the brand new dawn of Premiership cricket is gently lighting up the corridors of Twickenham Pavilion, and indeed after a rusty and ineffective performance against Acton last week, needs to shine along the corridors of uncertainty for the T’s bowlers.

Ruts won the toss and in the true traditions of 45 over cricket decided to bat so they had a total to chase – they were right, they did have a total to chase, just not quite the one they wanted.

What with volcanoes, work, family, university and all the other things that get in the way of practice, pre-season nets have not been well attended, unfortunately proving the damage that is done by not practicing, McCabe was caught cutting the ball high to backward point having occupied the crease for only 10 minutes. Warwick Paull came to the crease and after struggling with some swing and a typical slow early season pitch, he took it on the chin and proceeded to build a very effective innings hitting 62 before being trapped LBW by Ruts skipper, Saleem.

This brought Carlos to the crease, pugnaciously wielding 3lb of Kashmiri willow to smash 49 off 37 including 3 huge 6’s.

But wait, there’s more. Although Warwick and Carlos were undoubtedly worthy of mention, the performances of Tom Meredith and Rashid Mullahzadah are worthy of high praise.

Tom looked good last week scoring 80 at Acton, but really showed some class here retiring after just 91 balls having smote 131 runs to all corners of the ground, 110 of them in boundaries. Rashid came in for a cameo  appearance 6 overs from the end and had a look for 12 balls, knurdling 6 runs around the square. I’m not sure what happened then in his thinking, but something touched a nerve. His next 32 balls brought 50 runs without a dot being recorded in the book. Such was his acceleration and hitting power, that his 50 came in just 33 balls.

Ruts, then, had their total – 347. And after a well presented tea, with plenty of variety and quantity a solid A on the Hendometer, they went out to chase it down.

To be honest when we had them at 24 for 4 in less than a dozen overs, Rashid’s brother Fawad chipping in with a double wicket maiden, the game looked over. Wickets were shared across the attack, Rashid also taking 2 (for 38 off 6), Ashley – 1, JP – 2 and Clint – 2. We eventually knocked them over for 112 after 40 overs, which was, with my coaching hat on, fairly disappointing after we stepped off the gas halfway through their innings. This we can’t afford to do, and would surely be punished more severely against stronger opposition. So overall a 7 out of 10, with room for improvement in the field would be my assessment.

Martyn Fryer