1s victorious over Wimbledon

Paul Bridge writes...

A resolute Reigate Priory 9th wicket partnership of 19 runs in 11 overs withstood anything Wimbledon’s battery of fast bowlers could bowl at them, thereby inching the Priory past Wimbledon’s total by two wickets in a game where the Priory once looked to be cruising towards the finishing line.
Not for the first time Reigate, who are sponsored by Brookworth Homes, owed much to opening bowler Will Hodson - ‘Mr. Reliable’ - who made early breakthroughs in a strong Wimbledon batting line-up to end with a match-winning performance of 4-32.
Wimbledon’s side has changed markedly over the last couple of years. Gone is Ben Compton, who made 108 Saturday for his new club Richmond CC in the Middlesex Premier league. Gone is Neil Turk, concentrating now on the T20 game. Gone are the Australian professionals James Bett and William Sheridan. Gone too, it was thought, was Graham Grace, a man who for many seasons bestrode the league batting averages in Wimbledon’s cause.
But at 40-years-old, Grace returned to open the innings once more for the home side with Oliver Swann, a new recruit from Sandiacre Town in the Derbyshire Premier league and a former Bedfordshire County player, as his umpteenth opening partner. And batting at number three was Kelly Smuts, Wimbledon’s exciting overseas all-rounder from Eastern Province in South Africa, whose first two innings this season have yielded 57 against Beddington and 101 against Sutton.
Good batsmen though these three players are, they were all back in the pavilion within eight overs, thanks to Hodson’s opening spell. In his third over, Hodson had Swann leg before for 6 at a score of 15-1 and two balls later he had curtailed Grace’s hopes for more glory by bowling him for 8.
Smuts greeted Hodson in his next over by hitting him for six. And while Hodson dearly would have loved some payback it was Delmont, bowling from the Golf Club End, who had the dangerous South African caught behind by Ali Raja for 9 at 27-3.
This brought together two well-known Surrey names in Ryan Patel, formerly of the Surrey Academy and now a regular in the Surrey Second XI team, who scored 90 in this fixture at the Priory last season, and Matt Spriegel who played for both Surrey and Northamptonshire before becoming Wimbledon’s Director of Cricket last season.
Good pedigrees both, but it took Hodson only 11 balls to get a favourable leg before decision against Spriegel who made 1 run, departing at 31-4.
Wicketkeeper James Brown now joined Patel and between them they doubled the score to 62 before Richard Stevens had Brown leg before for 9.
Stevens bowled his 10 overs in the one spell. He is very much an unsung hero in this Llama side. Since he made his debut for the 1st XI in 2009 he has been in and out of the side. In some seasons (2010, 2012 and 2013) he has played the majority of league games, averaging 15 games a season. In the other four seasons, however, he’s played only an average six games a season.
In previous seasons Stevens has been a little expensive as a fast bowler. But in the two league games he has played so far this year – last week against Guildford and this game against Wimbledon - he has been the essence of economy. Against Guildford he gave away 30 runs in his 10 overs and in this spell against Wimbledon he yielded only 26 runs in the 10 overs. Last year, of course, his bowling was a major factor in the win at Wimbledon when he took 4-27, his best bowling for the firsts.
Patel and new batsman Will Leith put on 31 for the sixth wicket but when Patel was on 35, and looking increasingly in command, a slick piece of fielding by that man Hodson, saw the youngster run out and Wimbledon in trouble at 93-6.
By now off-spinner Simon King was bowling in tandem with Stevens and before long he dispatched Wimbledon skipper Will Leith, caught behind for 13, and Robbie Gunn, stumped by Raja for a duck at 95-7 and 101-8 respectively.
But King’s third wicket and his 150th in Priory colours since his debut in 2007 came in his eighth over after Wimbledon’s ninth wicket pair had put on 29 runs together.
It was the off-spinner’s sucker punch. Johnston had hit King for a towering six over long on off the first ball of the over. Undaunted, King lobbed up the next ball, Johnston tried to repeat the shot, not realising that lurking at long off, ready for the catch, was Chris Murtagh, one of the finest outfielders in the league, who duly pouched the skied offering with glee. Johnston had made 26.
King’s 150 1st XI league wickets at Reigate Priory have come at an average 23.81 off 952 overs with a best bowling of 6-74 against Malden Wanderers in 2008.
After an expensive last over, when number 11 batsman, Alex Hunt, a Cambridge doctoral student, hit another six off his bowling, King finished with figures of 3-41 from his 10 overs.
This last wicket pair of Hunt and spin bowler Alex Combe put on 24 runs before Hodson came back from his favoured pavilion end. With his second ball Hodson dispatched Combe for 14 and Wimbledon were all out for 154 off 44.2 overs.
When Reigate’s turn to bat came after the tea interval, opener Oli Hairs did what Oli Hairs does best. After scoring three runs off his first three balls, tame fare by his standards, he greeted Smutts’s second over by whopping the first two balls for 6’s and the fourth for a boundary. He took another 6 and a 4 off Smuts before going leg before to the second ball of Spriegel’s first over for 31 runs in 25 balls at a score of 42-1.
New batsman Richie Oliver and opener Brad Scriven both looked untroubled as they took the score to 74-1 off 16 overs, before rain caused a 12 minute stoppage with Reigate needing only 81 runs to win with 34 overs yet to play.
First ball after the break, though, Oliver was bowled by Spriegel and in Spriegel’s next over Murtagh was leg before to the former Surrey all-rounder for 2.
However Delmont steadied the ship with early boundaries while Scriven moved on to 28 not out before more rain stopped play for a further 30 minutes at 96-3 from 21 overs.
Everything went according to plan for Reigate supporters when play resumed. In five more overs the score had advanced to 122-3. Only 33 more runs were needed for the win and Reigate had over 24 overs left at their disposal. Wimbledon players were complaining to the umpires that the rain had caused the ball to be wet and the outfield to be slippery.
But the complaints suddenly stopped when Reigate collapsed. The rain, while causing a wet ball and a slippery outfield, also seemed to have livened up the pitch to the benefit of the fast bowlers. In his 9th over Smuts bowled Scriven who had made 44. Next over, and his first ball of the game, Hunt had Delmont caught behind by Brown for 26. !22-3 now was 122-5. One run later, in Smuts’s 10th over, Shoare was leg before for a duck to a ball that hit him high on the pad and the score was 123-6.
Two overs later, the 30th over of Reigate’s innings, Patel bowled a ball that climbed on number seven batsman Raja and seemed to follow his bat as Brown took a tumbling catch behind the wicket following the resultant nick. Raja was out for 5 and Reigate Priory now was at 131-7. And two overs after that, bowling at a furious pace, Patel bowled King for a duck as the Priory slid to 136-8. That 155-run winning target, once a doddle, now seemed a very long way away.
Skipper Luke Beaven and fast bowler Stevens joined forces together and decided to grind out the runs. Nineteen runs more were needed and there were still 18 overs left to get them in, but then five wickets had just fallen for 14 runs and Wimbledon were on fire, appealing aggressively and bowling like demons.
The runs came slowly, five in the first four overs then nine in the next five. At 150-8, after 41 overs, Beaven had scored 13 off 33 balls and Stevens had scored 1 off 32 balls. That’s a strike rate of 3.23!
Johnston, the South African paceman had bowled a miserly seven overs for six runs. Beaven took a single off the first ball of his 8th over and the 42nd over of the innings. Stevens blocked the next ball as he’d pretty much done with the previous 32 balls he had faced. Then, unexpectedly, with spectators anticipating at least another four overs to go before the issue was settled, Stevens hit Johnston for a six over square leg. The Priory had won by two wickets.
Next week Reigate play at Beddington in the 50-over format with a noon start in a bid to maintain its winning ways.