West Chiltington sneak a narrow win to send Slinfold bottom

A stand-out score of 92 not out from Chilt captain Tim Jarvis led the visitors’ innings as they posted 215-4 after being asked to bat.

Hugo Gillespie (39) and Jack Elliott-Monday (35) also made signifiant contributions in the face of some sloppy Slinfold fielding.

The reply came in fits and starts, Jonathan Hughes (28), Steve Haines (23) and Mushal Murad (25) all made starts and fourth-man in Kemar Small hit a top score of 47 taking them to 159-5, although they were finding it hard to play the Chilt spinners.

With the score on 169-6 when Imran Shah came out to bat, a Slinfold win looked unlikely as they required 40 off the last four overs to win.

But Shah plundered 30 off 20 balls which meant that Slinfold only required six off the last over with three wickets in hand, but all three were dismissed in the final over for 211 with two balls to spare.

Slinfold captain Hughes said: “Having won the toss we elected to bowl first, we unfortunately did not make use of the conditions, with the West Chiltington opening batsmen making a fast start and taking advantage of some wayward bowling racing to 81 inside 15 overs before the first wicket fell.

“Pleasingly we brought down the run rate with some accurate bowling from Imran (0-17) who was unlucky to go wicketless.

“It was unfortunate that some mistakes in the field cost us additional wicket as three catches were dropped which would have further reduced the run rate.

“Set 216 to win we got off to a great start and in the sixth over 55 runs were already on the board. However, we got bogged down by the West Chiltington spinners in the middle overs losing wickets at regular intervals.

“I am gutted for Shah whose efforts on the day deserved for him to be on the winning side, but unfortunately we were unable to keep cool heads in the final over to get us over the line - but credit to West Chiltington who did, to win what ended up being quite a frenetic game of cricket.

“I am really proud of the boys’ efforts, and to dig ourselves out of situations twice, once fielding and once batting, to almost win the game we can take some positives.”