Kingston stars in the Naval City, but ones come up short again

Portsmouth 2nd XI VS Bramshaw 1st XI v I – HCL Division 1, Match Report by Bailey Loveless

A miracle occurred on the 1st of June 2024. No, Kaush hasn’t found a girlfriend, Tom Arnold won a toss! He elected to bowl on a windy day on the Southsea seafront in Portsmouth.

Jamie Martin, who shared the new ball with Kingston, was returning from a week cruise where it was evident that he certainly had his fair share of the daily buffets.

Kingston and Martin bowled tidily at the start and despite not looking at his fittest, Martin bowled his nine overs straight through all while bowling into the wind and bowled a very economical spell of 1-29 off 9.

D’Monte then came on and bowled aggressively and castled their number 3. Symonds and B Loveless then came and offered some buffet bowling, which had Martin licking his lips. There were a lot of full tosses from the pair, which allowed their opener to get a hundred. In amongst the chaos, Vincent took a great catch on the boundary to remove their classy number 4.

The returning Dan Eckton and Jack “The Bison” Booth bowled some tidy latter overs as Booth took a well-deserved 2-24. Portsmouth had wickets in hand and were already past 200 runs with 8 overs left and 280 looked on the cards, but Kingston and D’Monte finished off their spells well to restrict the opposition to 254-7 off their 45.

Portsmouth provided a great tea, with Martin in particular tucking into some delightful cake.

Arnold and Eckton opened up, the latter playing a gorgeous cover drive. Arnold was dropped on 3, and we thought here we go a 100 is coming, but the first LBW of the game was given as he was removed for 7. Eckton soon followed as did Vincent and Booth senior as we found ourselves 70-4.

This brought Patel to the crease to join number 3 Booth jnr. Patel and Booth both cracked some lovely boundaries, including a big 6 from Patel. Booth departed for a well-made 43. Kingston joined Patel in the middle, but Patel then got given LBW. D’Monte was in and out quickly as he went to get ready for his college party in Fareham. I must say the boy smelt very nice where a high-end fragrance must of been in use, however, he was sporting a questionable all-black attire as if he was going to a wake.

Martin departed for 1 and at 129-8 D’Monte’s attire looked appropriate as we were about to be mourning a huge defeat.

However, Kingston had other ideas as he and Symonds batted incredibly smartly with Kingston hitting eight boundaries and four maximums, including a beautiful 6 hit inside out over extra cover, in a 65 ball 82 as the two put on 78 runs for the 9th wicket to add some much-needed respect to the score. We finished on 207-9 off our 45 to lose by 47 runs.

See the full scorecard here: https://bramshaw.play-cricket.com/website/results/6082783

Big thanks to Teresa again for scoring in freezing conditions.

Big game next week as we host Bashley 2s looking to get our first win on the board!