TAVISTOCK skipper Charlie Barriball did not want to dwell too long on his side’s five-wicket defeat at Thorverton, writes Conrad Sutcliffe.

The Moorlanders were hoping for a winning return to the A Division but that always looked unlikely after they were dismissed for 135.

Thorverton were in the 36th over by the time they passed the post, which shows how hard they had to work.

Barriball said on a drying pitch it was a good toss for Thorverton to win, but he did not want to blame the flip of a coin.

‘We just didn’t apply ourselves with the bat in what was more of a pre-season game for us having not had one to blow some cobwebs away,’ said Barriball.

There were more extras (35) than individual runs from the bat in Tavistock’s innings. The captain made 31 and super-veteran Steve Luffman uncharacteristically batted 77 balls for 28 runs.

Ben Slaviero (4-9) tied Tavistock’s batsmen down for over after over, as did Jake Choules (3-28).

Tumelo Yeki nipped-out Thorverton opener Andy Pitt in the first over after tea, but that was as good as it got as Dan Robbins (23), George Greed (27) and Jack Geraghty (60no) took no risks.

‘Yeki impressed with the ball and had their openers in all sorts of trouble early on which gave us hope,’ said Barriball.

‘A couple drops and near misses allowed Robbins to stay while others could be a bit more attacking around him, which is what we needed a bit more of.’