Honiton served up another poor collective batting performance to slip to a disappointing nine wicket defeat at the hands of Kentisbeare.

A week after the team had struck a fine win they batted first and were moving along at a fine rate, one wicket down and 71 runs on the Mountbatten Park score board, led there by skipper Oli Cave’s half century.

However, once the captain was sent packing wickets fell at an alarming rate and the wheels cam off the home innings!

Many of the wickets were ‘self induced’ with a number of batters looking settled and then, inexplicably getting out!

The only serious resistance to some decent wicket-to-wicket bowling came from the bat of Jack Rungert (21)

John Parkin was the pick of the Kentisbeare bowling attack, returning figures of 3-58 and the home total of 152 al out looked woefully short of a decent score.

That was shown to be correct as the Kent’s sailed home, losing just the one wicket on their way to the required total with James Sprague (45) and the hard-hitting Rory Thomas (70) the not out bastmen at the close.

Honiton skipper Oli Cave said: “That’s so disappointing and I know I am not the only one in our dressing room scratching my head as to just why we cannot find some consistency with our batting. The batsmen are good enough as they have shown at times this season.”

The defeat leaves the Mountbatten Park men slipping to third in the table, now 20 points shy of leaders Clyst St George who suffered their first defeat of the D Division (East) campaign.

Next up for Cave and his men is a visit to the table-toppers and it will need an improved effort with the bat at Bohea Field this Saturday (June 18) if the gap between them and the leaders is not extended further.