Lee pleased with Purbrook improvement

Lee was critical of the way his team batted after they suffered a first defeat of the season in a 16-run reverse at Alton II.

He challenged his players to dig in and bat sensibly and they did just that to secure a confident victory.

It was a much better performance and will give them plenty of hope for the coming weeks.

The captain showed confidence in his batsmen by electing to bat first after winning the toss.

They made sure they repaid his faith in fine style.

‘It was important we got back to winning ways and restored some confidence,’ said Lee.

‘Our batting was a lot better but other aspects of our game were not so good.

‘It was a complete role reversal from last week when our bowling and fielding had been good.

‘This week we dropped a few catches and gifted them far too many runs with extras.

‘It was a funny game though because St Cross never showed any intent of trying to chase our total down.

‘They seemed happy to accept defeat, just defend and try to pick up as many points as they could.

‘We even brought on a bowler to float a few deliveries up to try and tempt them but they kept patting the ball back.

‘It was disappointing that we weren’t able to pick up the extra points for bowling them out.’

Brad Mengham and John Moller got Purbrook off to a solid start, putting on 32 for the first wicket.

Mengham (53) and Josh Spiers (69) then put on 130 runs for the second wicket in excellent time

‘We got to 160 in about 20 overs and the runs were flowing,’ said Lee.

‘Bradley (Mengham) has come back to us from Waterlooville and has the potential to score a lot of runs.

‘He has been working hard on his batting and has changed his stance.

‘It seems to be working and he will be disappointed he didn’t go on to make a century.’

Spiers, who can only play every other week because of work commitments top scored, with Ben Michel (34), Clark Harding (35) and Lee (22) helping the hosts reach 300 for eight.

After Aaron Dean clean bowled one of the openers in the first over the visitors shut up shop in their innings.

‘We know we didn’t bowl very well giving away 43 extras including 34 wides,’ added Lee.

‘James Gurney and Mengham would be the first to admit they were way off the radar with their bowling.

‘The challenge now is to produce a complete all-round performance.

‘We still have a bit of work to do if we are to achieve that.

‘If we want to keep pushing up at the top then we have improvements to make.’