THE Elephant's Nest Cricket Club set off to Abergavenny in Wales, for their annual tour, on the last bank holiday weekend in May.

The first game was against Michealchurch Escley on their picturesque ground.

The Nest won the toss and elected to bat. Openers Chris Miller and Reece Day set about the Escley attack with venom, hitting boundaries at will, before Day departed for 11. This brought the in-form Ian Gray to the crease who, with the help of Miller — who hit an excellent 39 before being bowled and the excellent Mathew Parrish who got 38 — managed to get his second century for the Nest with a magnificent 100 not out.

A few quick wickets at the end left the Nest with 231 for 7 off 35 overs, a decent effort off a bouncy pitch.

After tea the Nest bowlers set about bowling the opposition out. Opener and Captain Ben Neale led the way with figures of 6-1-14-2, before Escley lost a good partnership between Evans (27) and Williams (20). It took the canny bowling of Mike Burns to winkle their top scorer out, leaving Wates with a simple stumping. After this, Day and Miller took two wickets each to clear up the tail and bowl Escley out for 131 giving the Nest their first win of the tour.

Having sampled the Abergavenny nightlife, the boys then took on Abergavenny Cricket Club on their beautiful former county ground.

Following in the footsteps of cricketing greats such as Andrew Symonds and Graeme Hick, openers Tim Neale and Will Simpson went out to bat.

Some good controlled batting gave the Nest a solid foundation before Neale departed for 27 and Simpson for 28 leaving the Nest on 63-2.

This brought Ben Neale and Ian Gray to the crease who moved the scoreboard on steadily to go past 100 before Neale got a leading edge departing for 15.

With wickets in had the Nest attacked the last 10 overs with Martin Rylands (38) and Gray (41) both doing particularly well. This left the Nest with 169-9 off their 35 overs.

After tea, and despite good bowling from the evergreen Tony Skeet (6-1-19-0), they could not make a breakthrough against a strong batting line up. It took a good catch and delivery from Simpson to take a wicket, by which time the scoreboard had moved on to 92 off 15 overs. This, however, awoke the touring team and they applied some pressure with Ben Neale taking three wickets (6-1-19-3) and Tom Murray bowling a good spell (6-0-31-1).

It left the home team needing five to win off the last over which they did with two balls to spare, meaning the Nest lost in what was an excellent game.

The last game on the tour saw the team take on the Newport Fugitives Cricket Club on an excellent pitch. In a far from fit state, the Nest took the field in a 20 over bash. The Newport batsmen took advantage of poor bowling advancing to 37 off only three overs.

Bowling accurately, Richard Stacy made the breakthrough, removing their opener for 30.  Former Sunday Nest captain Corin Russell also bowled well, taking the wicket of the other opener and Ben Neale again picked up three wickets leaving him with figures of 4-1-16-3.

There was also excellent fielding from James Palmer and Reuben Grice who saved a number of runs and took two catches but Newport ended with a daunting 139 runs.

The Nest set about the chase well on a good wicket with a quick 29 from opener Wilson and a standout 41 not out from Rylands. The Nest could not keep up with the high run rate finishing with a respectable 116, losing by 23 runs.

It was, however, an entertaining game and finished off a cracking tour.

Organisers say that thanks must go to touring umpires Frank Cox and Terry Pearce, plus scorers Les and Pam Sharpe. A|l the team is looking forward to the next one!