Promotion hopes suffer a blow: Saturday round-up

After a strong run of results catapulted them into the top four, Merstham’s chances of sustaining a promotion push took a blow on Saturday when they were defeated by second placed Alleyn.

 

The Magics dropped to fifth behind Horsley & Send, to whom they travel on August 18.

 

Captain Laurie Nicholson decided to bowl at visitors Alleyn in their Surrey Championship Division Five encounter.

Noman Javed took an early success, removing Gavin Van Der Merwe (8) with the score on 36. However, it was 128 more runs before Humayoon Nasir (1-61) and Asim Jafferi (1-37) removed Will Deasy (52) and Tom Eadon (85) in quick succession.

 

The runs kept coming until three were taken with the score on 249, courtesy of a hat-trick by Javed in his second spell, as he took his figures to 6-49 off 9.4 overs. His efforts to round up the tail also included a run out off his own bowling, but Alleyn knocked up an imposing 279.

 

Nicholson, fresh from bashing 45 at Banstead the night before, in a game to commemorate 104 years since the Rams’ final game - against Redhill - before several of their players served their country in the First World war, opened the batting with Andy Rivers.

 

Both were soon back in the pavilion with Robert Hardman as Ryan Foley (3-21) and Tristan Arnold (2-18) did early damage to the Merstham attack.

The only true resistance was offered by Ben Baker, who is now the first team’s top scorer this season, with 348.

 

Baker scored 84 - and his next best score this year was 75, in defeat to the same opponents in early June.

 

Unfortunately, wickets fell around him and Merstham were all out for 150 after 37 overs. 

 

While Merstham face Weybridge Vandals, Horsley and Kempton, all mid-table sides, it is likely they would need to win those and also inflict defeat on leaders Chertsey on the penultimate weekend in order to snatch second place for promotion, in their second season in the division.

 

The second team slipped into the relegation zone of the Surrey Championship 2^nd XI Division Four after defeat to second-placed Ewell.

On another day, 195-9 in 50 overs might have bene enough to defend. Nav Saeed (21), Manish Patel (34), Rob Harris (35) and Jack Letts (36 not out) all got starts in the visitors’ total.

But Merstham could only muster three wickets in reply as Ewell won in the 31^st over, Patel catching one off Imran Khan before Mohsin Ali (2-26 in 10 overs) forced catches to Khan and Richard Feist.

The third team took victory at second placed Trinity, who chose to bat and were dismissed for 180.

The hosts were rolling along at 128-4 but lost five wickets for 31 runs before their final pair made 21. Fergus Carrick took the first two wickets (2-17) and Afsar Khan the other at 96-3, before the introduction of Ben Carter (2-19) and Ben Snelling (3-27) started the mid-innings collapse. Josh Young 2-11 also took 2-11.

In reply, Hamza Ali made 23 before being run out, Max Stormer 44 and Matt Hill 23 on Merstham’s way to victory by two wickets in the 44^th over.

The fourth team had Trinity 60-6 from 15 overs, but couldn’t maintain their stranglehold and the visitors, who chose to bat, managed to reach 147 in the 32^nd over before going on to bowl out Merstham for 93.

As is so often the case even in defeat, though, a new star emerged. Fresh teenaged recruit Kartik Mehrotra took two very early wickets on his way to 6-41.

As if his devastating swing wasn’t enough, the Trinity opener chose to run some suicidal singles when the ball went straight to a fielder, resulting in quick acting youngster Alvin Sathya running out one player from point, also off Mehrotra’s bowling.

In the middle of the innings, however, after three consecutive maidens Trinity had to hit out and did so, Steve Pennock had one caught in the deep by Kashif Noon. Sathya had another caught in the slips by Matt Lehain, but Kyle Barnell helped himself to 64 not out. Asif Akhtar (1-11) had one trapped leg before in the middle of the innings before Mehrotra returned to finish the tail.

Sadly only Will Prior could get going with a good score, managing 25, as Merstham could only climb to 93. By the time Mehrotra came in at No 11 and second top scored with 13, it was all too late to save the game.