Brondesbury captain James Overy says it was an ‘awesome’ experience to come up against former Ashes winner and Middlesex star Steven Finn as they lost by 40 runs to Hampstead.

Having managed to bowl their Middlesex League Premier Division rivals out for 126 – with Anthony Wilkinson 3-11 the best bowler – they were shot out for just 86 in reply.

But although very disappointed with the defeat, Overy said it was good for Brondesbury to learn from the 31-year-old Finn before and after the match.

“It’s not every day you play against an Ashes winner, especially a bowler. You do often play against batters but to have the chance to bat against someone who has had such an amazing career was cool for our guys,” Overy said.

“He spent a lot of time after the game with us, especially with our young opening batsman and bowler, and the fact he did that speaks volume about him.

“He’s a brilliant professional and seems like a really nice guy. I always think it’s great to have the opportunity to play against those guys. It was awesome to do it.”

In terms of the result, Overy was not pleased especially after setting themselves up nicely with a superb bowling performance.

“Obviously we’re disappointed to lose, to get ourselves in a really good position to be winning the game, it was a shame not to close that out,” he added.

“It’s kind of been the story for us so far. We’ve been fantastic in the first half of games, but haven’t been able to bring both parts of the game together to get us across the line.

“I’m really pleased with how we were in the field and with the ball. I’ve often said you can tell a lot from a side by how they field and bowl, and we’ve been excellent. But we’re disappointed that we were not able to win a game that, in the end, we should have won quite comfortably.

“Credit to them, they were excellent, never gave up and deserved their victory.”

He added: “126 was probably 100 below par, but with the bowling line-up Hampstead have, there is not many better in club cricket, especially when you add Steven Finn to it. We knew it was going to be a tough chase, but we would want to be chasing 120 nine times out of 10.”

Brondesbury now travel to Richmond on Saturday in search of their first league victory and Overy said: “We won in the cup in quite a close game ,so we’ve got that monkey off our back. Going away to Richmond, it’s usually a decent batting track, and we know with our bowlers that we’re capable of bowling teams out.

“One of us is hopefully going to break our losing streak, we hope that’s us.”