Sutton all-rounders Harry Allen and Freddie Boys knocked Reigate Priory off from their top-of-the-table perch with both bat and ball on Saturday, as Sutton edged the home team by 25 runs in a low scoring game at the Priory ground.
Weybridge now has taken over the league leadership, following its win against East Molesey, with 99 points. This loss means the Priory slips to second place with 92 points and Sutton moves up into third place with 83 points.
Boys, who opens for the Surrey Academy, starred first with the bat, making the top score of the game with his 62 runs in 99 balls. He put on 71 runs for the second wicket with Allen, who made 41. This also was the highest partnership in a game that was dominated by the bowlers, particularly the spinners.
When it came time for the Priory to bat, Allen, who played several games last year for the Surrey Second XI, took five of the Priory wickets to fall with his left arm spin and Boys, also a left-arm spinner, took two wickets.
Last year when Sutton topped the Division One table to win promotion back to the Premiership Division, Allen topped the division’s batting stats with 795 runs at an average of 113.57 and was second in the division’s bowling stats with 39 wickets at an average 13.49.
Priory skipper Chris Murtagh put Sutton in to bat when he won the toss on the basis it’s normally easier to force a win if you bat second in the 120-over format.
However both Boys and Luke Smith seemed untroubled early on and put on 41 together in less than eight overs. Then Smith misjudged a ball from Will Hodson, shouldered arms to let the ball pass by the wicket, but was bowled instead.
This brought in to bat, Harry Allen, and his partnership with Boys lasted almost until lunch before Michael Munday, the Reigate leg spinner, bowled Boys for 62 at 111-2. The partnership, the biggest partnership of the game, lasted 25 overs for its 70 runs and was the backbone for Sutton’s final score of 180 from 57.5 overs.
After lunch (at 114-2 from 34 overs) the wickets began to fall. Jaimin Patel was unluckily run out when a hard drive from Allen was deflected by Munday, the bowler, onto the stumps at 126-3. At 143-3 Beaven took a double-wicket maiden when he first dispatched Allen, caught by Stevens for 41 and then five balls later had Sam Woods caught behind by Sam Hall for a duck.
Next over Munday joined the party when Andy Delmont took a well-judged catch from Gary Outram, the former Sutton skipper, who had made 13, with Sutton now 143-6.
The tail wagged a little with current skipper and wicket-keeper Daniel Edwards making 16 and pace bowler Aman Shinwari making 10, but Sutton ended up with only 180, a far cry from 111-1 just before lunch, when 200-250 seemed a more likely score.
Reigate’s spin twins Beaven and Munday had bowled the last 20 overs of Sutton’s innings in tandem with Beaven finishing with 4-52 from 22.5 overs and Munday 3-32 from 14 overs.
Reigate’s innings started off badly when second ball Ben Shoare slashed to cover and was caught by Smith off the bowling of Sutton’s overseas player from New Zealand, Richard Sillars.
Andy Delmont and Richie Oliver settled down together quickly and put on 48 runs in 12 overs. However Sutton brought on left-arm spinners Allen and Boys at this juncture, and with his second ball Allen got rid of Delmont caught for 26.
In Allen’s third over, Hall came down the pitch but was beaten by the spin and was stumped for 15 at 66-3. And Murtagh was caught at slip for 6 off Allen at 94-4.
For close to 90 minutes, Richie Oliver had been watching from the other end as his partners departed one by one. However, one over after Murtagh had left, Oliver himself was out for 52 leg before against Boys’s bowling, at 104-5. He had reached his 50 in 58 balls two balls earlier.
In Boys’s next over Dahl was out caught for 1 at 105-6 and with 76 runs still needed to win, Priory fans were desperately looking for a batsman who would stay put.
Ballast from the tail normally comes in the form of number eight batsman Richard Stevens and tales of his blocking out bowling and then aggressively hitting the ball around the field to win games are legion.
And for a while it looked as if this was going to be another famous Stevens innings. He put on 22 runs with Rory Haughton before Haughton became Allen’s fourth victim, leg before for 13 at 127-7.
Then Stevens and Beaven put their heads down and ground out 25 runs together in just over nine overs before Beaven was out caught off Sillars for 17 off 32 balls at 152-8.
But two overs later, Stevens was given out leg before off Allen’s bowling for 20 from 76 balls, and the game now was all over bar the shouting.
The ‘shouting’ came 5 balls later when Sillars bowled Hodson for nought and Reigate’s effort perished 25 runs short of the target at 155 all out.
Sutton’s spinners took seven wickets between them, just as the Reigate spinners had done earlier. Allen took 5-45 and Boys 2-51. The other three wickets for Sutton came from opening bowler Sillars, who finished with figures of 3-29.
Next Saturday the Priory are at home against East Molesey with the game starting at 11 a.m. After six games this season East Molesey are without a single win and lie bottom of the table with 20 points. The side’s overseas professional this year is Ben McDermott, one of the stars of the Australian Big Bash League in the last two years.