WHEN your number 10 is your top scorer you are always going to be hard pushed to defend your total and this proved the case for Warminster on Saturday.
Opening bowler Justin Shuttlewood shamed his higher order colleagues with a battling 36 before being last man out. This left Stroud a target of 186, which they reached with four wickets and five overs to spare.
With the score on 92-2 and Trevor Fabian and in-form Sean Maxwell looking good, Warminster were hoping for a score of 230 or so, but when Maxwell was run out for 22 the match turned in Stroud's favour.
Several of Warminster top order made decent starts, but none were able to convert these into big scores. Aside from Shuttlewood's late flurry, Fabian (34) was the only batsman to pass 30.
Led by Ben Pockett's 72, Stroud's victory margin would have been more emphatic, but for a middle order collapse that saw them slump from 117-2 to 170-6. In the end they cruised to victory while only Mark Coxon-Tenty (3-25 from 6.5 overs) offered much with the ball for Warminster.
Australian Maxwell captained the side on Saturday, but will make way for Tim Cowley when he returns from holiday tomorrow.
Maxwell said: "We probably deserved to lose by more than that. We played poorly throughout the most part of the match. 185 was just a mid range score, but at one stage we looked as if we wouldn't get 150.
"If we were to take anything out of the game it would be the fact that we played so poorly, but only lost by four wickets.
"We've won three games so far so we don't need to get too down we just need to concentrate and get back to winning."
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