WHEN will Goatacre stop winning games of cricket?

As if two successive promotions wasn’t enough, Craig Gibbens’ side began their Premier Two campaign with an impressive 50-run victory at home to Westbury on Saturday.

It was a result that at one stage had looked unlikely when the middle order was undone by the bowling of Joe Breet and Richard Oakley, and the tail was tasked with building a respectable total.

But with the aid of an unconventional 42 from Sam Parish and more than two-dozen runs from the rest of the lower order, Goatacre posted a competitive 178 on a tricky wicket.

That supplemented the knocks of openers Ed Kilbee (39) and Nick Pocock (47), the former of which was dropped with the total standing at 28 without loss.

In reply the visitors set about their task positively, but the Goatacre field was in supreme form. Wicketkeeper Parish set the tone by catching the top two of Matt Davies-Binge (13) and David Wade (15) and from then on matters just got better and better.

Westbury’s middle order failed to fire as the likes of Brad Dawson and Matt House took their catches, and it was only a 48 off 28 balls from Dean Semken that made the score respectable, with the away side eventually stumbling to 128 all out.

“It was a fantastic all-round team performance,” said skipper Gibbens.

“When we collapsed from 79-3 to 108-7 I was beginning to think it was the end, but Sam got us those extra runs and Kevin Iles and Matt helped us over the line.

“Sam batted at number nine and didn’t necessarily do it traditionally, he was smashing it to all parts of the ground for his 42, but we managed to get to 178 which I thought they would have to bat well to beat.

“Although Westbury played very aggressively, they kept hitting it to us. We caught everything and before we knew it they were 87-8.

“We bowled them out and apart from Semken, we got the top three scores on the day.”

Despite Goatacre’s excellent start to the season, Gibbens was realistic about his team’s prospects in their new division.

“Obviously we just want to stay up,” he said.

“To win it would be the stuff dreams are made of and to talk about it at this stage of the season is ridiculous.

“But there’s a really good feeling about the club that certainly carried on into Saturday’s win.

“Goatacre have never played this standard of cricket and this tells us we can compete at this level with a side that stayed up last year.”