Alcester & Ragley 1st (92-5) beat Ashton under Hill 1st (88 all out) by 5 wickets

 Ragley continued their fine start to the season with another excellent bowling display to bowl Ashton out for 88 and replace them in 2nd place in the league after this victory.

Sam Westwood started the rout as he had opener Cooper lbw for 5 in the 9th over. After this it was the Julian Reader show as he took 4 wickets in 10 balls, and also had another dropped in this time, as the Ashton batsmen could not keep the ball down in the testing conditions as all were caught. The pick of them being Marc Woolley’s catch in the slips to dismiss Will Archer for 0 from a beautiful away cutter from Reader, this made up for a much easier effort that he had dropped off the same bowler earlier in the innings! The score after this burst was 35-5 from 16 overs and Ashton were on the brink. Reader claimed his 5th wicket of the innings in his 9th over, to finish with his best league figures of 5-29 in a superb spell of seam bowling. After 20 overs the score stood at 44-6. Woolley was then introduced into the attack and had Jason Glazier caught at gully in his 1st over and Ashton captain Haines in his 4th. Westwood was then reintroduced into the attack to finish the innings off and it paid dividends immediately as he had Jim Glazier caught behind for a duck with his first ball back. With the score at 69-9 Ashton had their highest partnership of the innings as top scorer Mas Patel (20) hit some lusty blows to lift the score to 88 before he was bowled by Woolley to end the innings. After Reader the successful bowlers were Woolley 3-5 and Westwood 2-35 as Ragley achieved maximum bowling points for the 2nd game in a row.

Ragley looked to get the game over in quick time and the opening partnership had reached 23 when Warbrick was well caught at mid off for 10 from the bowling of Jim Glazier. Fellow opener Woolley (15) and then captain Lee (9) followed shortly afterwards to leave the score at 49-3. Lewis Clark (23) Michael Coombs (15) then took Ragley to the brink of victory with just 6 runs required before both were out to the bowling of Jason Glazier and it was left to Adam Peachey to hit the winning runs in the 19th over to complete a comfortable victory for Ragley. The Glazier brothers were the only successful bowlers for Ashton as Jim claimed 3-26 and Jason 2-5.