SPORTING Club took a giant stride towards winning a fifth consecutive NatWest Weekend League Division I title on Saturday.
Matt Hague’s undefeated side chalked up their seventh straight league win and with Romerils defeating second-placed Old Victorians the gap between the top two teams is 74 points with just three league matches each remaining.
With a maximum 40 points at stake for the winners in each league match, Hague and his team-mates already have one hand on retaining the Perpetual Trophy Division I Shield.
Champions Sporting Club closed their 45 overs on 205 for nine against St Ouen at FB1.
SCF’s first seven batsman all reached double figures with skipper Hague and Jason Carpenter top-scoring with 31 apiece, Hague striking four boundaries and Carpenter three 4s and one 6.
Dave Morfee, against his former club, bowled well for the losers with four maidens in a ten over spell resulting in two wickets for 18 runs.
After tidy spells by Nick Jewell and Mark Reynolds, former captain Tony Carlyon ripped the heart out of the St Ouen batting taking five wickets for 14 runs in 6.3 overs - Carlyon now having taken 15 wickets at the weekend this season.
St Ouen, who were beaten by 110 runs, were all out for 95 with 26 of their total coming in extras.
Ten-man Romerils consolidated third place following an excellent victory against Old Victorians on pitch one at Les Quennevais.
Romerils batted first and reached 186 for 5 and with rain interrupting one over of OVs reply the Duckworth Lewis readjusted scoring method came into play with OVs set 185 to win off 44 overs.
OVs wickets continued to fall regularly and although they were not far off the required run rate they finally run out of batsmen.
Ian Crocker opened and batting well (and was probably the first batsman to score a 50 on LQ1 this season) before he was eventually out in the last over for 55.
Crocker had good support from fellow opener Mark Saralis who went on to make 33.
Saralis also put in a good effort when bowling finishing with two for ten off ten overs - narrowly beating Chris Searson’s effort for OVs of one for 12 in ten overs.
Saralis, who bowled five maidens, only had six runs scored off the bat, the other four were wides.
Springfield retained their 100 per cent record in Division II to go top and with a game in hand.
Springfield yesterday defeated OVs Reserves at Les Quennevais by 19 runs.
After a slow start Suthan and Lee Graveson impressed to put on 47 runs in just over nine overs and with some big hitting they finished on 56 and 32 respectively leaving Springfield defend 140.
This they did with some tidy bowling and good catches and fielding with Tim Kearsey taking four wickets for the second match running.
Article posted on 28th June, 2004 - 12.00am
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