Jav the start Merstham 1s wanted to their championship debut season

Merstham cricket club celebrated the opening weekend of the first season that all four teams have played in the Surrey Championship with three victories from their four Saturday teams.

The first team, promoted for three seasons running, began their first ever Surrey Championship season with victory at Guildford City, thanks largely to five wickets from Noman Javed, for eight runs.

Skipper Naved Saeed won the toss and asked the hosts to bat, and was rewarded when Guildford were reduced to 38-5 thanks to Javed’s pace and bounce with three early wickets and Assad Naeem’s 2-26, proving the Magics will manage without departed paceman Sulliman Younis.

For CIty, Asfand Khan’s 67 in a partnership of 83 with Mohsin Bashir for the sixth wicket sustained Guildford to 138 all out from 39.2 overs. Ed Dawson took an excellent leg side stumping to new recruit Rahaul Madhok (1-24).

In the reply, opener Laurie Nicholson (30) top scored as he and Andy Rivers got off to a great start before the latter was out for 18 on 33-1. Merstham lost wickets regularly until a second new recruit Razi Khan (20no) and Saeed (1no) saw them over the line after 31.5 overs.

“We played cautiously and a bit of complacency crept in,” said the skipper. “We had them four or five down cheaply and then there was a big partnership until Razi had one of them caught on the boundary.”

The 2nd XI, also promoted last season, began their first Surrey Championship Fourth Division 2nd XI by beating Hampton Wick Royal by 50 runs.

Merstham lost early wickets but Richard Feist (19) and Manish Patel (43) put on 55 for the fourth wicket, then No 9 Imran Aslam notched 43 to muster 164 in 45.4 overs.

That gave them a total to defend. There was an early breakthrough from Safyan Aslam (1-17), before Hampton lost eight wickets in 47 runs thanks to Hamed Rehman (4-21 in 10) and Manish Patel (3-31 in 9) to bowl out the visitors in 42.1 overs.

The third XI scored the most runs of the individual four sides, but Trinity’s Chris Miaden’s 105 was the glue for their target of 226. James Lowe took 3-42.

Merstham started well with Ben Carter scoring 30, while youngster Matt Lehain top scored with 31. Jon Harrison took 23 late in the innings, while Tony Rickards on 16 and John Coleman on 8 were not out at the end with Merstham on only 178.

The fourth XI took a first victory under new skipper Gopa Nair. They lost early wickets at The Ring, against Trinity 4ths, and James Nolan made the most of some coaching and lots of practice over the winter to top score with 26, just ahead of Mohamed Imran’s 24 as Merstham reached 133.

In reply,  Merstham took three early wickets before Trinity started to push the runs. Spinner Asgar Tariq finished with 3-29 and John Young bowled extremely well for 4-6 as Merstham fielded tightly, Nolan lively in the field as well, and took regular wickets to win by 27 runs after 24.4 overs.