Reigate Priory versus Old Emanuel – Preseason Friendly - May 3, 2014
Reigate Priory saw off a determined Old Emanuel XI at Park Lane on Saturday to win a low-scoring game by 46 runs.
The win owed much to bowling all-rounder Luke Beaven who top scored with 57 and then ran through the bottom order of the Old Emanuel batting to take four wickets for 23 runs off five overs.
The fixture, the last of Priory's 2014 pre-season friendlies, looked to be a pleasant afternoon in the park for the home side, with 43 places separating Priory's fourth-place finish in the 1st XI Premier Division in 2013 and Old Emanuel's seventh-place finish in the 1st XI Fourth Division.
Any thoughts of that were dispelled from the start, however, as the Priory batsmen found it hard to get the ball, which was both moving and turning, off the square.
Priory openers Andy Delmont, the Australian professional, and Tom Lister could score only 35 in the first 10 power play overs and soon Rehan Mansoor bowled both Delmont for 15 and Lister for 28. This brought in Priory's evergreen runmaker Chris Murtagh and New Zealand coach Craig Cachopa, who plays for Auckland. Cachopa lasted nine balls and Henry Tye 10 balls after him as Priory slumped to 61-4 off 22 overs with Mansoor finishing his 10 overs with three wickets for 29 runs.
There was no Richie Oliver to prop up the Priory innings this week. Following his 94 last week in the friendly against Beckenham he scored two hundreds for Worcestershire 2nd XI during the week before travelling to Shrewsbury on Saturday to captain Shropshire in a 50-over game against Lincolnshire.
But this week did see the return of Beaven, back from a winter playing grade cricket for Pinjarra, a mining town south of Perth in Australia. He started off batting defensively, scoring but seven runs off the first 30 balls he received. In this he was following the example of his senior partner Murtagh, who had taken 29 balls to score nine runs himself, while wickets were falling at the other end and then took a further 21 balls in scoring just a single. But while the first three Old Emanuel bowlers had proven hard to get away (their combined 30 overs bowled cost but 86 runs for five wickets in the innings) bowlers four, five and six were not so economical. The runs started to flow as Murtagh and Beaven got into gear in a 76-run partnership before Murtagh left, caught for 59.
Captain Neil Saker then joined Beaven in a fast-scoring 61-run partnership in the last nine overs, before Beaven was needlessly run out for 57 (his last 50 runs coming off 35 balls) and Saker was stumped off the last ball of the innings for 22. Where Priory had been 77-4 off 30 overs, Murtagh, Beaven and Saker had seen the innings close at 201-7 off the full 50 overs, a much healthier position.
Will Hodson, Priory's opening medium-pacer, put to rest any pretensions to glory Old Emanuel might have had in their batting by bowling a mean eight-over opening spell that cost but five runs and yielded four maidens and two wickets. And at 15-2 off the first 10 overs and 43-2 off 20 overs, Old Emanuel were struggling just as the Priory initially had done.
Steve Hirst bowled seven overs of 'wobblies' for only 20 runs before the offspinning duo of Simon King and Chris Newbold bowled 18 overs in tandem tearing out the guts of the Old Emanuel batting line-up in splitting four wickets between them as the score moved from 38-2 to 113-6 off 37 overs.
This was when Beaven took up his brief five over residence from the Blue Anchor end as his left-arm orthodox spin put paid to the ambitions of Old Emanuel's free-hitting late order batsmen. His four wickets left the Priory comfortable winners by 46 runs as Old Emanuel ended on 155 all out off 46 overs.
Next Saturday sees the start of the Premier Division proper as Priory host newly-promoted Leatherhead in a local derby game. Leatherhead have in their squad former England Test player Shaun Udal who played the last of his four Tests in 2006 at Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium where his second innings 4-14 at one of the homes of spin 'stunned' India's batsmen to give England a famous win and a series draw.
