OLD Tauntonians and Romsey made it two wins out of two in the Southern Electric Premier League Division Three with a tense victory over Tichborne Park at Romsey Sports Centre last Saturday.

Winning the toss allowed captain Jody Brown to have first use of the batting strip, with Danny Mills and Nick Destefano sharing an opening stand of 76.

Mills was finally out for 40 and two wickets fell at 76, with Gus Flack bowled by Mike Butler and Brown was caught for 7, and it took a 57-run partnership between Destefano and Paul Longland to recover the innings.

Destefano was finally out for a cultured 88, passing 1,500 runs in Southern League matches for the club.

Longland and Charlie King continued to clock up the runs until the former was dismissed for 36 and King, playing in just his seventh Southern League match, stroked 43.

Tichborne’s Mike Butler returned figures of 6-50 in his ten over spell as the Romsey innings concluded at 262-3 in the allotted 50 overs.

Tichborne lost an early wicket in reply when Dan Mogg trapped Ed Primmer lbw and, after a quick-fire 27 from Butler, he too fell lbw, this time to Stuart Shapland.

Kane Burgess built an innings for the visitors, sharing stands with Tom Allam of 45 and 75 with Will Allam, but was snared coming down the wicket to Mogg and was superbly stumped by Keith Trodd, who was playing his 150th Southern League match, for 61.

Will Allam fell to exactly the same fate for 57 and, with time running out for the visitors, Gus Flack superbly ran out Jacob Bristow.

In a final flurry to catch up, Tichborne lost their last five wickets for 12 runs.

Mogg finished with four wickets and both the youngsters, Mills and King, bowled tidy spells as Tichborne fell nine runs short of Romsey’s total.

Elsewhere, a century by Pylewell Park’s Kyle Brooks against OTs & Romsey’s second XI proved too costly for the visitors.

Batting first, Pylewell lost early wickets to Mike Trodd and Sam Draycott, but the recovery by Brooks and Will Royan proved expensive.

Phil Wyatt took 4-55 and Trodd 3-29, while Nick Wood bowled a tidy spell of 3-26 in his 9.3 overs, but the final all out score of 226 was too much.

After a poor start, Pete Biddlecombe and Mike Trodd recovered with a 74-run partnership. Biddlecombe (40), Trodd (34), Jon Whytehead (25) and Sam Draycott (28) all got starts but could not continue on as they were dismissed for 188, losing by 38 runs.

OTs & Romsey thirds were soundly beaten away at Andover fifths.

The decision to field first was to backfire in a big way as, after an early breakthrough from Nathan Baker, Richard Woodley (117 not out) and Chris Hooper (67), added 96 for the second wicket and took the home side to a challenging total of 237-4 from their 42 overs. Roji Aujla picked up a couple of late wickets.

OTs didn’t fare much better when they came to bat, the only innings of note came from Dave Brown with 24, as they were dismissed for 106 inside 30 overs.

Three large partnerships for Lymington III at Hunts Farm were enough to give the young academy side a hefty defeat.

Centuries from Chris King and Asa Drodge following an opening stand of 103 set up a mammoth 351-4.

Only Ollie Jordan had any success with the ball with his three-wicket haul.

In reply, Stuart Wood batted doggedly for 26 and Jordan again came to the front with a well formed half-century including eight boundaries. Jack Salter chipped in with 27, but by the close they were 167 runs short.

Rob Newman’s Sunday XI were comfortable winners in their match against Bramshaw.

Romsey restricted the visitors to 169 all out, despite 67 from John Murray, and then lost a wicket with the first ball of the innings.

But Alex Bampton and Jim Stewart shared a 50-run partnership, before the prolific George Eldridge came in and proceeded to make light work of the Bramshaw bowlers.

He scored 86 not out in just 44 balls, with 13 fours and two sixes.

Stewart made a good 54 runs playing the anchor roll to Eldridge and leading their side to a seven-wicket victory.