Brondesbury captain James Overy insists it was ‘eye-opening’ for his squad to see what standard they need to be at next season after a seven-wicket defeat to North Middlesex.

Overy lost the toss and was put into bat first where they posted a score of 168-6 with youngster Nathan Fernandes leading the way with 49.

North Middlesex then scored 169-3 in reply, with Middlesex star Luke Hollman scoring 86 runs to add to his three-wicket haul.

“You’d rather have Hollman in your team than not, he’s a very good cricketer, and I’m sure he’ll go on to play a lot of very good high-level cricket,” Overy said.

“He makes a hell of difference to a side like that, but in fairness to them they looked a good outfit, they were well-drilled and highly energetic in the field.

“Hopefully it was eye-opening to some of our guys to see the level that we need to get to and the fact that we competed fairly well for most of the day was really pleasing.

“Obviously disappointed to lose, but relatively pleased with how we went about things.

“People grafted quite hard to get up to what we thought was a maybe slightly below-par score, but we should mention Nathan Fernandes, he got 49 and he is only 16 years old.

“It was a really important knock and he batted really well. Second innings they started well, but I think they were 30-3, then a bit of a question over a lbw for Hollman which if you get him out the game looks a hell of a lot different and it would have been a long chase for them.

“That’s the way cricket goes sometimes, to his credit and Will Vanderspar’s credit they batted brilliantly after that and never really gave us a chance, so it was a really good performance from them and I’m not sure we did a whole lot wrong.”

Brondesbury travel to second-place Teddington on Saturday expecting another tough test.

“They’re all tough games in the Premier League and we’d much prefer that,” added Overy.

“We’re learning a lot and getting better, and we realistically knew we wouldn’t be winning the league, so it’s been great to get a lot of experience for the younger guys.

“We’ve played six under-18s this year in the first-team.”