Match report: Dick Belcher
Images: Ewan McDowall / Chris Bates

What is the Surrey Trust League all about ?

The Surrey Trust League exists to bridge the gap between junior and senior cricket. It is designed to challenge and develop Under 21 year old players. Each side must include 7 players under the age of 21. The Competition is intended to provide highly competitive cricket for the most talented young players in the county. Teams should look to win by utilising the Under 21 talent at a club’s disposal; but where Clubs play over 21 year olds a captain should ensure that senior players are not filling all the top batting spots or bowling a majority of the overs as the role of the senior players is intended to guide Under 21 players and in some cases to control and enhance a match. Senior players should never look to dominate a match.

Today’s teams

Reigate Priory, and today’s opponents East Molesey, have both chosen to have their entire teams made up of Under 21’s. The Under 21 Trust team are an important element of the Club’s strategy to make the transition from Junior into Senior Cricket and it is important that we narrow the gap between our various teams to make it an easier transition between the teams and provide better competition for places in the senior teams.

And that transition is already well underway where both of today’s teams have players appearing in their senior Saturday teams with 6 Llamas in yesterdays either 1st or 2nd teams and similarly 4 of the Moles in their respective 1st and 2nd teams from yesterday.

The Clubs are well matched at 1st team level with both 1st teams in the Premier Division; however the Clubs are beginning to diverge at 2nd team level where East Molesey 2nd eleven have already won Division 3 West and will play in Division 2 (just 2 divisions below their own 1st team); while our 2nd’s will stay in Division 4 and will be 4 divisions below our 1st team, making the transition between the teams much harder.

From Saturday’s matches, today’s Moles team has 1 1st teamer, 3 2nd teamers and 7 3rd teamers, while from Saturday’s matches the Llamas have 3 1st teamers and 3 2nd teamers. The Moles include 7 of their semi-final side with 3 of the 4 not playing being regular 2nd teamers, one of whom was playing for the East Molesey 1st team in their (winning) semi-final of the Club Conference Cup (Bertie Joel Trophy) away at Sunbury; so the Moles were under-strength from their semi-Final side.

Setting the Scene

The Trust League has been running for many years and Reigate Priory have only re-entered a team in the competition in the last few years and have never won the Chris Bullen Trophy. In the last 3 seasons we have been losing semi finalist (twice) and losing finalist (once) and it was today’s opponents East Molesey who won the 2023 encounter at Park Lane with their 200-3 chasing down our 197 all out. So today’s fixture is a repeat of the 2023 Trust Final and sees the Llamas (Tier 1 East Winners) playing the Moles (Tier 1 North Winners) at Horsley and Send’s Twinn’s Field ground.

Many of the players from the 2023 Final are playing in today’s game with Seth McDowall, Morgan Barnes, Ben Ware, Will Jones and Sam Bell reappearing for the Llamas and Dylan Marx, Tiam Afshar, Alfie Simons-Gooding and Joeseph Akhurst, reappearing for the Moles.

Match Report

East Molesey won the toss and with light rain forecast chose to field and Seth McDowall and Sam Bell opened the batting for the Llamas.

Seth was dropped 2nd ball and went on to make the Moles pay for their mistake racing to 35 off 26 balls including 6 boundaries, before he mistimed one to sky a catch to keeper Dominic Millard from the bowling of Moles 1st teamer Toby Crowther for the Llamas to be 44-1 in the 5th over.

Morgan Barnes, who plays his Saturday cricket on today’s ground in Horsley and Send’s 1st team in Division 2, was next to go being the 1st of Luca Green’s 3 wickets when he was lbw for 13 with Reigate now 76-2 in the 12th over and this was very soon 76-3 as in this same over the Moles were celebrating getting Tommy Bates caught behind by keeper Dominic Millard for Luca Green’s 2nd wicket.

Into the Llama middle order and Ben Ware joined Sam Bell and the pair calmly took the score onto 122 when in the 22nd over Sam Bell, who was dropped earlier in his innings among 7 spilled catches from the Moles and had made the Moles pay for their mistake reaching a solid 33 from 49 balls, was the 4th wicket to fall caught by Alfie Simonds-Gooding for Luca Green’s 3rd wicket (7-1-28-3).

The middle order continued to contribute as Alex Butterfield moved the game on with 15 from 17 balls before being bowled by Moles skipper Joseph Akhurst for the Llamas to be 146-5 in the 26th over. Meanwhile Ben Ware was demonstrating why he should bat earlier in the Saturday teams moving onto 45 from 61 balls before he was well caught by Dylan Marx for Joseph Akhurst’s 2nd wicket (7-1-41-2) to have the Llamas at 177-6 in the 32nd over. Without addition to the scoreboard and in the same over it was 177-7 as Will Jones was run out.

With 8 overs left there was a danger Reigate’s innings wouldn’t last the distance but those fears were soon gone as Captain Jack Sadler was joined by Fin Willsher and the pair went at almost a run a ball putting on 37 in 6 overs to take the Llamas past 200 onto 215 when Fin (19 from 26) was caught behind by Dominic Millard off Toby Crowther’s bowling and with 10 balls left the Llamas were 215-8. As the tail tried to wag the same pair then dismissed Jonathan Wylie (5) for Dominic Millard’s 4th catch behind and Toby Crowther’s 3rd wicket as the Llamas lost their 9th wicket with the score at 222. Toby’s figures were 6-0-43-3 but Toby was guilty of bowling far too short to our openers but his much better length gave him his reward as he got into the Llama tail-end.

After a very brief stoppage for rain the innings ended just 2 balls short of our allotted 40 overs when Jun Mackrell sacrificed his wicket going for a 2nd run to try to keep Captain Jack Sadler on strike. Coming in at number 7 in the 26th over with the score on 146, Captain Jack had taken charge of the innings and his 41 not out from 35 balls was a testimony to the calm way he set about marshalling the Llama innings up to a competitive 231-10 where the Moles had used 9 different bowlers.

Would it be enough ?

Well we found out the answer very quickly into the Moles reply as after just 10 overs the Moles were already in trouble at 37-4 as Alex Butterfield’s accurate off-spin (5-0-18-1) and Jonathan Wylie, with a brilliant spell of pace bowling at the other end (5-1-16-2), demolished the Moles top order with Tommy Bates calmly running in the take off the bails for the other wicket.

Dylan Marx (1) was 1st to go caught by keeper Morgan Barnes off Jonathan Wylie’s bowling to have the Moles 1-1 in the 2nd over. Alex Butterfield then had James Eggleton (8) caught by Jack Sadler for 8-2 in the 5th over. The opening bowlers then combined as Alex caught Tiam Afshar (Moles regular 2nd team keeper) from Jonathan’s bowling for 12-3 in the 6th over and still in the 6th over this became 13-4 with Tommy Bates running out Toby Crowther. The opening bowlers had done the early damage from which the Moles would struggle to recover.

Bowling changes didn’t bring any respite for the Moles as Fin Willsher and Tommy Bates came into the attack and in Fin’s 2nd over he had Damandeep Singh (11) caught by Seth McDowall as the 5th wicket fell and the Moles were 44-5 in just the 13th over. Four overs later the score had only moved to 50 when the 6th wicket fell as Fin Willsher (4-0-19-2) had Dominic Millard (11) caught by Will Jones.

Seth McDowall replaced Fin as the spinners bowled in tandem with Tommy Bates, unusually wicketless but nonetheless bowling a very good spell of 6 overs for just 8 runs, to put further pressure on the Moles run chase.

Although there was a brief fight back by Hamza Khan and Luca Green who took the Moles up to 89 in the 25th over when they lost their 7th wicket when Seth McDowall got his 1st wicket with a sharp caught and bowled to dismiss Luca Green (13) and 2 runs later with Will Jones’ 2nd catch, Seth dismissed Alfie Simonds-Gooding (1) and 91-8 was soon 92-9 as Joe Perry was caught by keeper Morgan Barnes for a wicket to Captain Jack (3-0-14-1).

The final wicket fell to Seth McDowall (6-0-28-3) as Hamza Khan (34) was stumped by Morgan Barnes (2 catches and a stumping) and the Moles reply finished after 29 overs on 108 all out 123 runs short of their target.

The Llama fielding was almost without a fault and perhaps the only blemish came with a warning from the Umpires for a bit too much chirping. Anyone who is familiar with games against East Molesey will no doubt be somewhat amused by this!

A terrific team performance, well led this year by Jack Sadler, and in previous years by Will Timmons who was invited to join in the winning team photo, as Jack Sadler was presented with the Chris Bullen trophy.

The Umpires choice of Man of the Match was Seth McDowall for his rapid 35 and his 3 wickets; and there were also many other contributions today and in previous matches (for example from Advaith Bali who was missing from today’s team) from many other players and we must mention the non playing contribution from Chris Bates who has steered this team towards winning this trophy and of course the many Managers who have seen these players through the various age groups under Director of Cricket Jim Harmer’s watch.

This group of players have been together for a few seasons and their friendship shows through in their cricket and they deserve much credit for winning this trophy.