Herefordshire defeated but cricket wins in the sun

And the large gathering of spectators enjoyed a day of cricket to match the weather and the surroundings with plenty of runs scored on a good batting pitch.

The day could hardly have formed a greater contrast with Berkshire's previous scheduled visit to the the picturesque East Herefordshire ground.

On that occasion, play was abandoned the day before the three-day game was due to start during the monsoon-like conditions of July 2007.

In this, their final MCCA Trophy game of the campaign, Herefordshire ultimately went down by 47 runs but acquitted themselves well considering that they had to make five changes from the announced team due to a variety of call-offs.

A couple of local players had cause to be pleased with their inclusion.

Former Wormelow off-spinner Ollie Powell, now a first-teamer with Birmingham league side Harborne, bowled his 10 overs for a relatively economical 40 runs.

And former Burghill & Tillington and Kington, and now Brockhampton, opening batsman Ben Stebbings played some fine shots in his maiden one-day Minor Counties half-century.

Berkshire won the toss and chose to bat but lost David Barnes to Chris Boroughs' third ball of the day.

But the visitors went on to produce some attractive stroke-play as Craig Crowe batted fluently for 75 and skipper Bjorn Mordt took full toll of the Herefordshire attack, repeating his century of last season against Herefordshire as he finished with an unbeaten 112 in Berkshire’s 316-5.

Stebbings (64) and Harshad Patel (20) took the Herefordshire reply to 68 before they were parted, after which there was some more good batting from Henry Langford (30) and Richard Hall (53), who had earlier picked up a couple of wickets with his occasional left-arm spin.

But the run-rate was always applying pressure to the home side's reply and, although there were plenty of shots from the lower order batsmen, Here-fordshire fell well short.