After some difficulties on the Friday, we arrived at Kilmington with a full XI, with on paper a reasonable balance of batting and bowling. Kilmington had only nine, later to become ten, but we batted nevertheless. After falling off a horse, one should remount as soon as possible in order to recover confidence: perhaps mindful of this, Paul ("Betty") Martin, who made two ducks in the same innings at Kilmington last August, opened the batting, resplendent in his new whites. Adam shared the duties with him. They made slow progress on the artificial pitch against good bowling, but were beginning to lay a useful foundation when Adam made his first and only misjudgement and was leg before. Kevin soon made a rather more blatant misjudgement, with the same effect only more so. Duncan played a poor shot to a good ball, James played a poor shot to an ordinary ball, and a collapse was well under way. The problem was not so much the loss of the wickets as that we hadn't scored any runs: the outfield was very slow, and only Duncan and (very briefly) Kevin made much attempt to score. The first ball after a drinks break bowled Paul, who had held things together, and would have bowled a much better batsman. John Harris did not last, though he did hit the first boundary of the innings, in the seventeenth over; nor did Owain. Total disaster was averted by Rob, Jitan and Toby. Jitan especially showed some skill at improvising, and between them they raised the total to a halfway decent 83. That is, 166 would have been a decent score.

Our approach had been to avoid risky shots, and this had been very successful except when we missed the ball, as we generally did. The Kilmington approach was to make sure that the ball was hit and not worry about where it went. Their scoring rate was a little higher than ours, and they hit lots of catches off Kevin and Duncan, none of which landed anywhere near a fieldsman. Kevin gave nothing away, Duncan not very much, but no wicket fell and Jitan and Gregory were allowed a try. Nothing changed: Gregory, up the hill, was almost as economical as Kevin had been; Jitan, down it, almost as tidy as Duncan. The ball still frequently went in the air, and still no-one could catch it or usually even get near it. Eventually Jitan induced a shot so nearly vertical that there was time to send for the wicket-keeper, but by then it was too late. Soon after they turned to slogging to take them the remaining short distance. One, off Jitan, went for six; another, off Gregory, went to Rob, who was too hung-over to catch it; and a third, off James, went to Kevin. He did catch it, but by that time Kilmington were within three runs of victory.