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Andy Hooper took four wickets for the Seconds on Saturday

IN their first game of the season in the Southern Electric Premier League, newly promoted Andover went to Havant, arguably their toughest opposition they will come up against all season.

Havant showed why they were last season's league and cup double winners, racking up a formidable total of 256-6 from their 50 overs.

Powells' sponsored Andover started their fielding well, restricting Havant to only 20 runs off the first ten overs, with Richard Taylor picking up two wickets. Taylor looked to be back to his best, eventually returning figures of 3-27 off his ten overs. However, Havant's quality throughout their top order was evident as all their batsmen made useful contributions.

Former Hampshire all-rounder Lawrence Prittipaul and South African star Will Prozesky were the pick of the bunch, both notching 50s as Havant began to exert their dominance. The cause was further hampered when they lost Ali Hooper to a torn hamstring suffered fielding.

Andover started their run chase brightly with the promising opening pair of Mark Miller and Uwe Birkenstock looking in good form. However, the dismissal of Miller saw a flurry of wickets that put Andover in an impossible position from which they never recovered.

The wickets fell at regular rate with no one being able to make a start and build an innings. The impressive Havant bowling line up eventually bowled Andover out for a meagre 92, but, despite such a crushing defeat on their return to the top flight, skipper Roger Miller was happy with the performance.

He said: "We put up a good fight and there were plenty of positives. "We were up against a seriously good side - they are the current champions and favourites to win the league again this year - and we shouldn't beat ourselves up about the result. "Losing Ali Hooper this early in the season is a huge blow as I was looking at him scoring some valuable runs in the one day games, but we have strength in depth this year and will look at other options.

"The season really starts for us when we play Hursley Park at London Road."

That game could prove to be vital in the battle to stay in the top flight, as Hursley Park finished bottom of the league last season but stayed up through default.

ON a warm and overcast afternoon, Andover II welcomed Southern League rivals South Wilts II to London Road for their final warm-up game prior to the start of their league campaign this week.

Andover won the toss and decided to bowl first on what looked a good surface despite the torrential rain which fell through most of the preceding week. Several changes had been made to the side but this did not disrupt the good form in the field demonstrated last week at St Cross.

All the bowlers performed well and maintained good control, making life very uncomfortable for the South Wilts batsmen. Wickets fell at regular intervals with South Wilts only managing to muster a paltry 90 runs. The pick of the attack were the two left armers, Andy Hooper (9-3-17-4) and John Foster (8-1-19-3).

The other notable performance came from young wicket-keeper Matt Knight who took five catches and a stumping in a faultless performance behind the stumps.

With only 90 to chase it was the perfect opportunity for team to exorcise the demons of the previous week, where the batting fell away chasing an equally low total. Openers Steve Williams (34) and Mark Copleston (45 not out) proved the quality of the pitch by mixing solid defence with some explosive hitting in a partnership of 79 in just 19 overs.

The match was wrapped up by the 21st over and the side can now take some confidence into their first match of the league season tomorrow away at Porchester.

3:05pm Thursday 8th May 2008

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