Bexhill skipper defends tactics

BEXHILL captain Steve Phillimore sprung to the defence of his side's tactics in the face of heavy criticism from a promotion-chasing Littlehampton side.

The West Sussex outfit have forged a reputation for themselves over the years of not being shy when it comes to expressing their opinion and they vented their spleen at their visitors, who they believed had no intention of achieving a positive result.

They cited the relatively slow run-rate at which Bexhill, who handed a first XI debut to 13-year-old prodigy Max Finzel, scored and the fact that Phillimore elected to field first - a decision taken by many captains around the county solely because of the high likelihood of rain which, sure enough, did arrive - as their reasoning

Bexhill's cause probably wasn't helped by the fact that they latterly blocked out for a draw against Sidley the previous week. But once again this would appear a case of circumstances conspiring against them, leaving them little alternative but to try and avoid defeat which, to their credit, they again accomplished.

But Phillimore, who would never back his side if he didn't believe it was justified, retorted: "I've got no apologies to make for what I did on Saturday. I put them in because it was going to be a rain-shortened match and the best way of getting a result is if the side batting first gets a low score - that was the plan.

"Then it really chucked it down at tea and I think we would have had 43 overs to get 250. I think their captain (Paul Wells) missed a trick because he should have declared at 200. He was lucky he got 50 overs in and he wasn't bold enough."

Jack Munro (1-20) opened nicely with the ball and Lloyd Waughman (1-118 off 25 overs) again caught the eye. But neither could do much to contain the rampaging Gary Tester (134 not).

Phillimore (25), along with one of their players of the season in East India Tandoori man of the match Jeremy Wassell (48), masterminded the turnaround and, after another stoppage for rain, Hamish Russell (11 not out) and Neil Broughton (7 not out) saw them to the safety of the pavilion, albeit only one point better off. But that point was enough to draw them level with Haywards Heath at the foot of the Sussex Division Two .