Reed knocked out of National Village Cup

Reed (129 all out) lost to Langleybury (201-8) by 72 runs.

REED'S pursuit of National Village Cup glory came to an end as they lost in the Herts and Beds area final to Langleybury.

Reed won the toss and elected to bowl but despite a classic opening spell by Tidey (9-3-24-1) the visitors got off to a reasonable start and made steady progress to 43-0 after 11 overs.

The introduction of Karl Ward (9-0-45-2) into the attack saw Reed get a crucial breakthrough, though, as he struck in his first over, and with Tidey picking up his wicket in the next Langlebury were suddenly under pressure at 43-2.

However, when the third wicket fell this only brought Langleybury's Godden (65) to the crease and he and opener Williams (65) lifted the score to 131-3.

Langleybury eventually made it to 201-8 despite the last two overs seeing the fall of four wickets for just three runs.

In reply the home side got off to the worst possible start losing Frenay for 0, but captain James Heslam and Chris Jackson began a promising partnership and pushed the score to 45-1 from 10 overs.

However, with the pressure on to keep up with the rate the game turned significantly in the visitors' favour as Carter (2-29) removed both Jackson and Heslam in the space of two overs.

Stuart Smith (25) and 18-year-old Tom Greaves came in and played some nice shots but just as the tempo needed to be raised Greaves was bowled lbw for 18.

Smith soon followed along with Johnson and Reed ended up falling well short as they were bowled out for 129.

Heslam said: "On reflection we possibly could have looked to push the singles a bit more in our innings to fight this as the field was set back but they did bowl good areas and we are still a fairly young side. Hopefully this is something we can learn from for the future.