A LACK of match-winning partnerships cost Chesham CC at Horspath last weekend, when their up and down season continued with a seven-wicket defeat.

Every win has been followed by a loss this season and that trend continued despite a half century at the top of the order from Barney Atkins.

He made 54 while James Day and Jason Rance added 24 and 25 batting at four and five.

But stands of 57, 38 and 39 weren’t enough to get the score up to where it needed to be and in the end they needed a 51 from Matthew Rance down the order to reach 218-9 from their 58 overs.

With Ollie Turner unavailable, Atkins stood in as captain.

He said: “We were probably 20 or 30 runs short again. It was a decent total and we thought we had a good chance at half way, but the pitch went dead and didn’t turn much and we play our best cricket when we can get our spinners on.

“If we’d got up to 250 we could have put some scoreboard pressure on them, but we struggled to get one big partnership to turn 50 into 100.

“It’s been the story of our year. We keep making the same mistakes and losing wickets in clusters.

“We were five down at lunch and you’re never going to get a good score from there and in the end we did well to get as many as we did.”

Horspath, who have also struggled for runs this season, had no such troubles on Saturday though with Robert Eason, James Phillips and Shahbaz Ali all getting the runs that wrapped up a seven-wicket win.

After topping the table after week one, Chesham are now second from bottom ahead of Saturday’s trip to Shipton-Under-Wynchwood.

Atkins said: “That is definitely a game we’re targeting to put up some points.”