U19s Progress to ECB T20 Area Semi-Finals

2nd placed Reigate Rapids (Played 2/Points 8) hosted 4th placed Sutton Scorchers (Played 2/Points 5) at Park Lane on Friday evening and, with 4 points available for a win, both sides had their eyes on top placed Beddington (Played 3/points 10).

A win for Sutton tonight would leave all 3 sides in with a shout of the title with one game left for each side, as it would leave Beddington on 10 points and both Sutton & Reigate on 9 points, in the ECB U19 T20 Tier1 East League where the 5 teams play 4 games each.
So with all to play for (or so we thought) it was surprising to see Sutton arrive without an umpire, scorer or even a match ball.

The Sutton innings started with George McLoughlin bowling a maiden over at the start of the power-play as the Llama bowlers set about the Sutton batting order.

In the 4th over Ben Ware had Gagan Erra (13) caught at cover by Alvin for 21-1 then in Ben’s next over (4-0-22-3) Seth McDowall took a catch at wide mid wicket to dismiss Sutton 2nd teamer Aarav Rajnikanth for 8 and with his next ball Ben dismissed Sutton captain Jay Evemy when he was caught by Sam Clark at mid-on for 32-3 after 6 overs.

2 wickets in one over for Ben Ware was then followed up by 2 wickets in one over (10th) for Tommy Bates as he bowled Sutton 1st teamer Ansh Bansal (18) and then had Aditya Ganguly well stumped by Tom Harvey James and Sutton had lost half of their wickets for 44 at the 10 over halfway stage. The next wicket also belonged to Tommy (4-0-22-3, identical figures to Ben) as he bowled George Duckworth with Sutton now 49-6.

The sequence of two wickets in one over was to continue (for the 3rd time in the innings) this time to Charlie Harris as Tom Harvey James took a good catch from a thin edge from Ahrujan Ragunathan from a wide delivery from Charlie and 52-7 became 53-8 when Dylan Paskaran smashed a ball to extra cover where Seth McDowall took his 2nd catch of the innings. Charlie then took his 3rd wicket (4-0-16-3) when Dylan Waldon-Ferguson, having hit a 6 and a four in the previous over, attempted a scoop shot and fell lbw (when someone remembered to appeal !) as Sutton lost their 9th wicket with their score now 70-9 after 15 overs. Alvin had meanwhile bowled his 4 overs for a miserly 0-12.

The last pair, Sahil Sheth & Ashutosh Chauhan, now batted sensibly as they used up all of the remaining overs playing risk free shots and while not smashing the ball out of the ground they nonetheless took the Sutton score past 100 before the McLoughlin brothers combined to dismiss Ashutosh (10) with the last ball of the 20th over as Jacob took the catch at mid off from George’s bowling (4-1-22-1) as Sahil remained not on 18 with Sutton all out for 103.

Seth McDowall immediately hit the 1st ball of the innings from Jay Evemy (2-0-20-0) for 4 but in the 2nd over was caught and bowled by the Sutton 2nd team leg spinner Sahil Sheth whose extra bounce saw Seth hit the ball higher up the bat than intended, to give a return catch and a wicket maiden to Sahil (3-1-17-1).

Jacob McLoughlin joined Sam Clark and the pair shared in plenty of boundaries as they chased down the target before Sam (33 from 28 with 6 fours) was bowled by Dylan Waldon-Ferguson (2-0-21-1) and the Llamas were 73-2 after 8 overs.

The end wasn’t far away as Will Jones (16 no from 12 balls) and Jacob (30 no from 24 balls with 5 fours) took the Llamas past 100 and despite plenty of encouragement from a noisy Blue Anchor crowd for Will and Jacob to reach the target with a six; the pair calmly took singles to safely see the Llamas over the line on 104-2 after just 11.5 overs; helped along the way by 14 wides from the Sutton bowlers..

With games in this competition needing to be played no later than the 31st July it meant that what was expected to be a title decider between the Llamas and Beddington will not take place as Beddington were forced to concede the game having turned down offers of dates to play the fixture. This leaves the Llamas top of the league on 16 points and onto the Area Semi Finals where the next game is scheduled for Friday 19th August away at East Molesey (winners of tier 1 central) with the winners progressing to the Final on Bank Holiday Monday the 29th August at Normandy CC.