BERE REGIS 70-2 (19pts) beat PORTLAND RT 69 (1pt) by eight wickets

BERE Regis steamrollered Portland Red Triangle by eight wickets in the opening round of the Dorset ‘Thank You NHS’ League Division One campaign.

Much of the pre-match talk had surrounded all-rounder Simon Proffitt’s move from the islanders to Bere due to his relocation to east Dorset.

And Proffitt was soon among the wickets, taking the key scalp of Portland skipper Matt Randell (0) after Chris Leake (10) had perished to Crispin Brown (1-20).

Miserly, accurate bowling from seamer Rich Payne then put the brakes on Portland’s attempted recovery.

Payne returned astonishing figures of 3-5 from eight overs to stifle Portland’s normally attacking approach, with only Callan Laws (21) offering resistance.

Portland were bogged down on 64-4 which quickly became 64-6 when Payne and Rob Murphy (1-21) rattled through the middle order.

Worse was to come for Triangle when sharp spin and bounce from off-spinner Sam Goodhew proved unplayable.

Despite bowling just two overs, Goodhew took four wickets without conceding a run as Portland crumbled for 69 all out.

Kiwi seamer Sam Mihell (1-33) removed Matt King (4) early in Bere’s reply but Payne (18) quickly got to work with Murphy (26no) to break the back of the chase.

Rich Samuel bowled Payne, who hit four boundaries, but Murphy finished the job with Dave Griffiths (6no) as Bere cantered home with 25.1 overs remaining.

New Bere skipper Brian Keegan told Echosport: “The latter part of the game just seemed to happen so quickly, we just blew through them. We couldn’t ask for much more.

“Then from a batting point of view, when you’re chasing a low total, you’re hamstrung by the points system the way it is.

“We lost two wickets chasing 70 and got 19 points out of it.

“On the day, I would’ve batted first, but how it worked out was perfect.

“There were no demons in the wicket – they just got bogged down when Rich came on and he bowled a really good line and length.”

On Goodhew’s remarkable haul, Keegan added: “He puts quite a few revs on the ball anyway, but he hit his mark straight away and was getting turn and, more importantly, bounce.

“It’s historically a low and slow wicket but he extracted some bounce and that, coupled with the turn, did for them.”

Randell was left to reflect on a poor batting day: “We just didn’t apply ourselves with the bat,” he admitted.

“It was disappointing. We spoke about trying to be positive and we let them get on top of us quite early and build some pressure.

“At no point could we put the pressure back onto them. It was a case of accumulating a lot of dot balls and not having any release shots.”

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