Llamas Tame Lions With Stunning Cup Victory

It was one of those games that you hear about or read about. Rarely do you actually ever see such a game and even if you do, you still don’t really believe what you’ve just seen, because it all seems so unlikely, so surreal.
Reigate Priory had batted first against Horsham in the round two game at Horsham Sunday in the ECB 45-over Club Cricket Championship. Reigate made 163 all out in 39.4 overs, 40 of those runs coming in a last wicket partnership between Richard Stevens (29 not out) and Oli Thilo, who made eight.
Horsham, in reply, were 146-1 after 30.5 overs needing only 18 more runs to win with 14.1 overs left to accomplish the task. Start the car, as Geoff Lloyd might say.
Then Angus Dahl, the Surrey Academy and Reigate Priory all-rounder, broke the 140-run Horsham second wicket partnership when he had Ryan Maskell superbly caught by a back-pedalling and tumbling Rory Haughton.
Next, Harry McInley carved through four Horsham wickets, destroying Horsham’s upper and middle order, before his nine overs were up. Figures of 0-28 from six overs transformed into 4-36 from nine overs.
Horsham were 159-6, but now needed only five runs for the win.
Cue Oli Thilo, who also plays in the Surrey Under 15s side, coming back to bowl after earlier being pasted for 30 runs in just two overs. The score is 161-6, now, three runs needed for the Horsham win.
Thilo bowls Jonathan Whiting with his second ball and then bowls Ed Clark with the sixth ball. Stevens’s ninth over costs one run to leave Horsham on 162-8.
First ball of his next over Thilo wins a leg before appeal against Sho Mollick. Next ball he bowls James Brehaut first ball for his hat trick and the Priory win by just one run.
The unlikely has just happened. It’s unclear which side is the more gob-smacked – Horsham who had eight batsmen score just three runs between them, or Reigate Priory, who were humiliated by Weybridge in league play 24 hours earlier and had looked to be repeating the experience.
Reigate had won the toss and gone in to bat on a pitch described by one Priory batsmen as having a damp patch on a length at the Town End (where water had escaped through old covers) and behaving as if it was the Mumbai pitch after five days at the other end.
Wickets tumbled with Reigate 22-4 after only four overs with Richie Oliver, Oli Hairs, Ben Shoare and Rory Haughton all back in the pavilion with only 18 runs between them.
Dahl, batting at number six, steadied the innings as he and Henry Tye (who made 2) put on 28 together for the 5th wicket.
Dahl and Beaven (14) put on 20 for the 6th wicket and Dahl and McInley (4) put on 20 before Dahl was out for 49 from 77 balls at 104-8 in the 27th over.
Simon King (12) and Richard Stevens put on another 19 runs for the 9th wicket, even though a reverse sweep caused King to pull a muscle in his shoulder thereby preventing him from bowling in the Horsham innings.
Fortunately the 40-run last wicket partnership gave Reigate a more respectable final score of 163. It worked out to be a run-a-ball 40-run partnership because Stevens opened his shoulders to smash three sixes in four balls in the general area of square leg off the hapless left-arm spinner Nick Oxley.
When Horsham went out to bat Reigate hopes were immediately raised when a lightening quick pick up and direct throw from Dahl left Horsham opener Akshaj Krishnan stranded yards away from safety at 6-1.
But that was it for the next 30 overs as wicket-keeper Ryan Maskell and number three bat Michael Thornley put on 140 runs together.
Thornley, the former Sussex and Leicestershire batsman, was in the Horsham 2005 side that won this Club Cricket Championship trophy at Lords. On Saturday, he had scored 114 not out against Cuckfield CC in league play, so he was seeing ball well.
Stevens had opened the bowling, and once over the indignity of seeing his first ball thwacked for six, bowled his first five overs for 31 runs while Beaven at the other end bowled three maidens in a five-over spell costing three runs.
Oli Thilo’s first spell was only two overs in duration as Thornley and to a lesser extent Maskell gorged in a 30-run two-over feast.
Dahl then was partnered first by McKinley and then by Beaven (whose total nine overs cost only six runs) but the score continued to tick along at over four runs an over to 144-1 from 30 overs.
This was now when the Horsham collapse began. With his second-to-last ball of his nine-over spell, Dahl had Maskell caught by Haughton for 52 (off 94 balls).
In the next over McKinley saw off the dangerous Thornley by bowling him for 76 from 90 balls. Next ball, McKinley won a leg before appeal against Tom Johnson leaving Horsham on 147-4.
After a Stevens over costing five runs and then an overthrow, also costing five runs in McInley’s next over, Horsham at 157-4 needed only seven more runs for the win.
But McInley won his second lbw decision of the day against Oliver Wassell and in his next over, his ninth and last, had Nick Oxley superbly caught by a sprinting Stevens diving forward at mid- wicket to dispatch Oxley for 12.
Horsham were 159-6 and after Stevens’s next over needed only two more runs for victory at 161-6.
Beaven had what seemed to others to be a problem as with King unable to bowl he had bowled out himself, McInley and Dahl. Stevens had one more over available and his options were Thilo (0-30 from two overs) or Oliver, who has not bowled much in recent games.
Beaven, who after the game said he had no doubts whatsoever, picked Thilo. And Thilo repaid his skipper with that hat trick and four wickets in eight balls and one of the more improbable wins you can witness.