There were wins for Hartley and Lordswood in the Shepherd Neame Kent Cricket League at the weekend, with the weather winning other games.
SHEPHERD NEAME KENT CRICKET LEAGUE
PREMIER LEAGUE
WEEK 8 – 28 June 2014
Beckenham v Blackheath 106-2 match abandoned
Bexley 96-8 v Canterbury 119-10 match incomplete
Lordswood 151-4 beat Bickley Park 147-10 by six wickets
Sandwich Town 226-9 lost to Hartley 232-3 by seven wickets
Sevenoaks Vine 24-1 v Bromley 276-8 match incomplete
Swathes of the County were hit by some of the worst summer storms imaginable yesterday and sadly put pay to the conclusion of three Premier games. Fortunately some areas escaped the black clouds, huge thunderstorms and torrential rain.
In one of these, Hartley produced some sparkling cricket to secure a seven wicket victory on their travels to Sandwich. The home side elected to bat and all their top seven made a few, Alex Smith, 59, the only to reach fifty but with 37 by Daniel Evans and 31 from Stuart Smith, Sandwich posted a respectable total of 226-9, with Dan Redwood and James Hockley both taking three wickets each.
The Sandwich total however was to prove well below par as Shane Deitz scored a rapid 90 from 88 balls and helped by 37 from James Hockley, an unbeaten 56 by Scott McKechnie and 37 from 18 balls by James Thomson, Hartley breezed home with eleven and a half overs to spare.
The only other match to reach a conclusion was at Lordswood where Bickley Park’s batting problems re-emerged and after having been asked to bat, Bickley struggled early against the pace of Adeel Hussain and Dan Masters, and with Lordswood bowlers sharing the wickets around, Bickley were all back in the hutch after 50.2 overs for a disappointing 147, with only Dan Magin, 33, and Mick King, 30, adding some respectability.
Lordswood made light work of the chase achieving victory in just 31.3 overs, Palash Joshi scoring 38 and Matt Green wood a useful unbeaten 51 from 40 balls. This leaves Lordswood in third place in the table and Bickley struggling at the bottom, now 39 points away from the relegation safety zone. They have some hard work to do now to avoid Division 1 next season.
The weather ruined what looked set to be a tight encounter at Bexley. Bexley, with the rare appearances of Kent CCC regulars Adam Ball and Adam Riley invited their visitors Canterbury to bat, and they found runs very hard to come by as with Adeel Malik taking 4-32 and Adam Riley 3-26 they slid to what seemed a disappointing total of 119 all out, Justin Macvicar 33 and Sam Lowry 29 the only major contributors.
However, Bexley also found batting problematic. Once George Wells had gone for 28 with the score becoming 84-4 a collapse ensued thanks to Stuart Drakeley taking 3-20 leaving them on 93-8 when time ran out due to weather interruptions. Imran Qayyum also took 3-15 in an exciting low scoring game.
Sevenoaks Vine remain three points behind leaders Blackheath as they took 8 points form an incomplete game at the Vine whilst Blackheath also took 8 points in an abandoned game at Beckenham.
A century by Dan Christian, 115, and 74 by Freddie Wilson enabled Bromley to set Sevenoaks Vine a target of 277 but rain delays and time restricted the Vine to only 8.2 over ending on 24-1 at the close. Nicholas Sale was the pick of the Vine bowlers with 4-70.
At Beckenham, after a delayed star by an hour due to a late morning storm, Blackheath chose to bat and had reached 106-2 after 30 overs, including a useful 51 not out by Tanweer Sikandar 51, when the storms returned and sadly no further play was possible in what looked set to be a good contest.