A season's best seven wicket haul by Reigate Priory left-arm spinner Luke Beaven together with a club record first wicket partnership of 228 kept the Priory on its winning ways with a ten wicket victory over Leatherhead on Saturday.
The record-breaking day means the Priory keeps that 23 point margin ahead of Wimbledon in the league table. Wimbledon also won Saturday by beating Guildford. Next Saturday the league reverts to the 50-over game for the last five games of the season, so Reigate would have to lose three of its five games and Wimbledon win all five of theirs for the title to stay with Wimbledon.
Beaven's seven wicket haul against Leatherhead brings his total wickets for the league season to 42, at less than 10 runs per wicket, top of the Premier league 1st XI bowling averages. His 7-39 is the ninth best bowling performance by a Priory 1st XI bowler over the past 35 years.
The unbroken opening partnership of 228 by Andy Delmont (129 not out) and Chris Murtagh (87 not out) broke a 24-year-old club record set in 1990 of 224 for the first wicket. Delmont's century, his third of the season, keeps him atop the league batting averages with 562 runs at an average 70.25. In three seasons so far at the Priory, Delmont has scored over 1,800 runs in Premier Division 1st XI games at an average of 49.57. This would put him third in the list of 1st XI batting averages for Priory batsmen since 1979.
Leatherhead had won the toss and elected to bat on a flat wicket on a day when thunderstorms and rain had once been promised but which turned out to be a cloudy but warm summer's day. Will Hodson had Leatherhead opener Mike Nicol leg before for 6 in the eighth over at 27-1 but neither he nor skipper Neil Saker were getting much out of the pitch in early skirmishes, despite several nicks from the batsmen behind the stumps. Thus Saker brought on Luke Beaven from the town end to replace Hodson after 12 overs and results, not for the first time with Beaven, were immediate. First ball, Beaven had number three bat Matt Laidman leg before for 7 at 54-2.
However for the next 97 runs, Reigate could take only one wicket (number four batsman Guy Harper caught behind by wicketkeeper Michael Burgess off Beaven for 12). Sonny Cott, Leatherhead's young opener, a schoolboy cricketer from Reed's School who recently was promoted to the Ireland Under 19s, was playing with the maturity of a seasoned batsman in his mid-20s. Cott reached his 50 in 68 balls seemingly without trouble. A loud appeal for a caught behind off Beaven when he was 77 at 122-3 was turned down by the umpire and Cott seemed completely unfazed by any attempt to get him to 'walk'. Son of the guitarist and songwriter Gerry Cott, a founder member of the Boomtown Rats, Cott the cricketer was living the words of that group's 1977 single 'Lookin' After No 1' and he went into lunch on an accomplished 80 not out.
Cott's partner, after Harper was out, was Joe Peak, who top-scored with 37 in the fixture earlier in the season at the Priory. After a lively start to this innings, Peak was dropped by Luke Beaven at deep square leg off a full toss from Simon King the offspinner, when he was 14, and Priory would have been disappointed to go into lunch with Leatherhead on 132 for only three wickets down.
But after lunch the wickets started to fall with increasing regularity. With the score at 151 Cott was caught by Delmont off Beaven for 85, his top score for Leatherhead in four appearances this season. Peak, who went on to score 45 off 51 balls, was starting to look dangerous when he was well caught by Tye off Beaven's bowling. Shaun Udal was bowled by Beaven for 11 at 184-6 and after a 32 run partnership between Leatherhead skipper Matt Joblin and Mike Wakefield, offspinner King joined the party with two wickets in successive balls. First Joblin was well caught in the deep by Craig Cachopa for 15 and next ball, the batsmen having crossed, Wakefield was leg before for 16.
But it was Beaven who quickly brought the Leatherhead innings to a close at 225, after paceman Jonathan Tribe was snapped up by Cachopa at slip and Nick Van Der Westhuizen was smartly stumped by Burgess. Beaven, who last week was playing for Surrey 2nd XI, finished with figures of 23.4 overs, 8 maidens, 7 wickets for 39 runs. This was the seventh time this summer he has taken four or more wickets in an innings in league cricket. Ironically the one game he couldn't take a single wicket was the first time these two teams met for the opening game of the season at Reigate Priory when Beaven took 0-28 in nine overs.
With 60 overs to score the 226 runs needed for victory Reigate had been given a straightforward target of 3.77 runs per over. However Murtagh and Delmont started cautiously as if the pitch was holding dangers unseen during the Leatherhead innings. Certainly Leatherhead's opening bowlers Andy Baker and Tribe were bowling well and aggressively but the Reigate pair was able to score only 18 runs in the first 10 overs, eight of which came in the 10th over.
But slowly the pair started to look more comfortable at the crease. Murtagh, for him, has had a below average season in 2014 with 296 runs season to date at an average 29.6. He has been fighting to regain that form that has given him a lifetime club record of 5,164 runs in the 1st XI at an average 40.04. Dropped at 24 off the bowling of Westhuizen when the score was 49-0, Murtagh fought through to regain some of that fluency Reigate cricket fans remember so well. His innings of 87 in 133 balls contained 10 fours.
Delmont is having an Indian summer. He looks big in the crease, commanding and showing a confidence, grittiness and timing he hasn't always shown in his two previous seasons with the club, good though those seasons were. He's batting - well, like an Australian - with contempt for the bowling and a seemingly insatiable appetite for yet more runs. In this innings of 129 not out in 133 balls, he hit 19 fours and one 6.
After the slow start, the Reigate pair upped the tempo to 99 runs from overs 11 to 30, at an average 4.95 per over. But with the score at 117-0, after 30 overs, and the Leatherhead side missing their leading wicket-taker in leftarm spinner Adam Dyson, Murtagh and Delmont almost doubled the scoring rate as they began to run riot over an increasingly demoralised attack. Ninety-two runs came in the next 10 overs as the Leatherhead attack wilted and Reigate won with 16 overs to spare at an overall run rate of 5.18 per over.
Murtagh and Delmont have form in scoring big partnerships together. Earlier this year the pair put on 184 for the first wicket that set up the victory against Sunbury away in May. Two years ago, also at Sunbury, Murtagh and Delmont partnered for 254 runs, a club record for the second wicket (since records began in 1979) with Delmont ending on 157 not out.
Murtagh also is in the record books for his 218 third wicket partnership with current Reigate Priory Director of Cricket Michael Foster in 2010 against Weybridge.
Next Saturday Reigate Priory is playing away to Banstead with the return of the 50-over competition.
