Things looked as though they would be tough going for the Devon attack as early as the 2nd ball of the Somerset reply when Dave Amery was smashed to the boundary by Dave Stephenson. But the South Devon medium pacer gained his revenge with the very next delivery when he got one to rise sharply and Stephenson could only manage to glove the ball in the air to present keeper Mountford with the simplest of catches. The way that Somerset approached their innings, it seemed that the road back to the Cider County was closing in an hours time as defensive and watchful shops were of a minimum. Dave Amery claimed his second victim of the afternoon when he crashed into Collins’ stumps and when  Richard Cavendish returned the ball to keeper Mountford and Somerset skipper was run out for 19, the visitors were left reeling on 43 for 3. The situation became far worse when Bob Eames, fresh from his half century in the Devon innings, took a wicket in each of his first two overs, one to a quite stunning catch by Chris Theedom at cover point and the other to a great piece of work behind the stumps by Nigel Mountford, and suddenly the total became 47 for 5 and a first Devon victory of the season looked very much on the cards

This was not the case though, as Somerset were not going to give the game up without one hell of a fight. Reeves, struggling with a muscle strain, was looking solid at one end and at the other, Steele started to play an increasing number of big shots. The pair of them added 65 runs in a little over 15 overs before Nick Rogers took his first Championship wicket for the side when he bowled Steele. The Hatherleigh all-rounder then took the second stunning catch of the innings when he clung on low down to dismiss Finan and when Reeves was also out to another good catch from Cornwood’s Cavendish off the bowling off Dave Smale, Somerset were all but beaten on 142 for 9. Dave Amery returned to pick up his 4th wicket of the afternoon to end the visitors innings on 148 and hand Devon their first win of the season by 65 runs

There was still plenty of room for improvement in the performance, but then again there were also several plus points from the day.The batsmen all dug in and made starts till the end of the innings leaving wickets in hand to give the possibility of a run feast towards the final overs. Dave Amery claimed four wickets to see him to claim figures of 9 for 60 in his two Championship games to date that have been played at Chagford CC. The ground fielding was again good and very much an improvement on the Dorset game.

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