Merstham showing their real Quality

By sosborn

Fullers League Division Two

Wandgas 145

Merstham 146-4

Merstham achieved a much needed win at Quality Street after what has been a disappointing start to the season.

Captain Dan Feist won the toss and inserted Wandgas then followed it up with a good spell of accurate swing bowling taking four wickets while Tristan Newton kept it tight at the other end.

Resilience from the Wandgas lower order brought their total to a respectable score, but wickets fell regularly with Simon Rivers, Tristan Newton and Richard Turner taking two a piece.

Wandgas never looked like taking the game away from their hosts and were bowled out for 145.

Merstham began their pursuit positively against the old ball but lost Ed Loader early gloving down leg side with the score on 19.

Joe Shinners and Richard Turner were left to steady the ship and looked to build a match winning partnership.

Tuner played the anchor role while Shinners was striking the ball superbly to take the score towards 100 before the next wicket.

Turner departed for a sensible 18 but the game looked beyond Wandgas by this point.

Shinners was joined by Vincent who scored a quick 10 and then Rivers before holing out at mid-off on a match-winning 78.

Manish Patel joined Rivers and the pair made light work of the remaining runs with hard running between the wickets and clean hitting from Rivers.

Merstham's third XI continued their impressive start to the season with a fourth straight win to maintain their winning start to the summer.

Having been put into bat by Ripley the Merstham team quickly found themselves struggling at 20-3. It was then left for the Merstham middle order to rebuild the innings. Some aggressive and classy batting from the Merstham trio of skipper John Young (44) vice captain Rob Young (50) and Omar Shuja (68no) saw Merstham set an imposing target of 222-7 from their 47 overs.

In reply Ripley struggled against some accurate bowling from the opening pair of Ian McGillivray (1-22) and Imran Aslam (1-17) and soon found themselves 11-3.

An assured innings from Justin Langen (38) saw Ripley rebuild their innings to 93-4, but they were rapidly beginning to fall behind the run rate and the decision was made to hold out for the draw.

But some fine bowling from Rob Young (2-17) and Ameer Pasha (3-8) helped Merstham take the final six wickets for just nine runs and seal the victory.