Surrey Championship Premier Division
Reigate Priory 194-9
Banstead 60
Priory won by 134 runs
An unbeaten century by Andy Delmont, coupled with superb bowling performances from Will Hodson and Luke Beaven, led to a comprehensive 134 run Reigate Priory win over bottom-of-the-table Banstead on Saturday.
Heavy morning rain meant the 120 over game was curtailed by 15 overs when play finally got underway at 1pm. Banstead won the toss and put the Priory in to bat on a damp pitch.
Delmont had a new opening partner in Tom Lister, as Richard Oliver was playing T20 cricket for Worcestershire again. Batting never looked easy for the whole day and it took ten overs before the first wicket fell when Lister was caught off the bowling of Aman Shinwari for 19 at 34-1.
Wickets fell regularly thereafter as no Priory batsman, save Delmont, could come to terms with the conditions. Reigate's 'big guns' of Chris Murtagh, Craig Cachopa and Michael Burgess all fell after modest starts for ten, 19 and five respectively. When Henry Tye and Beaven both made ducks, the Priory were 114-6 after 35 overs and looking in trouble.
Delmont, though, was slowly and patiently accumulating runs. Boundaries were few and far between. Indeed he went from 45 to 64 with a sequence of 19 singles in a row.
Delmont's 50 came up in 86 balls and when support came in lower down the order in the form of 14 by captain Neil Saker and 13 by Simon King, Delmont moved on to his century off 160 balls as the Priory declared at a final total of 194-9 off 56 overs. It was the Australian batsman's second century of the season following his score also of 101 not out against Sunbury, three weeks ago.
This left Banstead 48 overs to get the 195 runs for victory, but once Hodson struck with the first ball of his second over, Banstead never threatened.
Two years ago Hodson topped the Premier Division bowling statistics for wickets taken in the season. Last year he was in the top ten wicket takers in the division with 27 wickets at 22.44. In the four games before this Banstead game his return, by his standards, was modest – 31 overs, seven maidens, 112 runs for five wickets. Against Banstead, though, he was unplayable - moving the ball both in the air and off the pitch. He took wickets in his second, third, fourth and fifth overs to destroy the heart of Banstead's batting. At a total of just 8-4 Hodson boasted personal figures of four wickets for five runs off five overs.
Banstead did put on 30 for the fifth wicket as captain Richard Bedbrook, who top-scored with 21, and South African overseas player Uwe Birkenstock, who made 20, tried to mount some sort of resistance.
But then Saker brought left-arm spinner Beaven into the attack. As with Hodson results were pretty much instantaneous. Beaven bowled Bedbrook in his second over and the following ball had Chris Lowe leg before wicket at 38-6. Four overs later he ended Birkenstock's defiance with a catch by Cachopa at slip with the score at 51-7.
Hodson who bowled unchanged throughout the Banstead innings then chipped in with his fifth wicket when wicketkeeper Michael Burgess had a second stumping of the innings off the medium-pace bowler. In both stumpings the batsmen returned to the pavilion somewhat bemused by Burgess's lightening reactions in removing the bails.
Not to be outdone, however, Beaven then took the final two wickets to fall as Banstead collapsed to 60 all out. Beaven ended with figures of eight overs, five maidens, five wickets for five runs. Hodson's final tally was 15 overs, six maidens and five wickets for 29 runs.
In a season of five games and five wins so far, Beaven has taken two 'fifers' in a tally of 15 wickets for 112 runs – an average cost of only 7.5 runs per wicket.
