Courtesy of Tom Cerson.
After a very long drive into Ilford, Galleywood 3rd XI arrived at Barkingside Rec to face Ilford Catholic 3rd XI. Ilford won the toss and elected to bat first.
M Riches and S Penkar opened the batting with G and E Boddu opening the bowling for Galleywood. The bowling was kept tight and the openers weren’t allowed much room to score with G Thurnell and M Howard continuing on the nice start eventually getting to drinks after 15 overs with the score 49-0. Immediately after drinks, G Thurnell struck, getting S Penkar to come down the wicket allowing J Priest to take the bails off to claim the first Ilford wicket. T Noori then came to the crease and started to attack the bowling as Ilford slowly started pushing the run rate up. Eventually, G Thurnell claimed his second wicket as he bowled M Riches for 34. D Howard came on to bowl as well and nearly claimed a wicket as Noori skied the ball way up in the air but unfortunately the ball was dropped out on the boundary and rolled across for 4 and Ilford reached drinks at 30 overs with the score 132-2. After drinks, Ilford continued to attack the bowling of D Howard and E Boddu. Noori reached his fifty but quickly afterwards was trapped LBW by G Boddu. In the next over, M Howard got K Shah stumped again by Priest for 28. Ilford Catholic finished 194-4 from their 40 overs with Noori top scoring with 55 and Thurnell the best figures of the Galleywood bowlers with 2-39 from his 9 overs.
After a short break in the sun, J Gray and G Williams opened the batting for Galleywood to some very good bowling from N Akhter and V Phogat. Gray edged the ball to A Swain in the slips for 1 and shortly afterwards, Williams edged to the keeper K Shah for 9. G Boxer and T Cerson continued to defend against the quality bowling attack and managed to see off the opening bowlers and reacher 20 overs with the score 22-2. Boxer then just edged the ball to Shah off the bowling of V Thiagarajan for 5 bringing M Howard to the crease. Cerson and Howard then steadily built a solid partnership of 28 before Howard was struck on the pads and given out LBW for 19. E Boddu then came to the crease and was unfortunately stumped early for 1 off the bowling of A Swain. D Howard joined Cerson at the crease as they saw off the last 5 overs as Galleywood finished 72-5 off their 40 overs with M Howard top scoring with 19 and V Thiagarajan the pick of the Ilford bowlers with 2-12 off his 9 overs.
Ilford Catholic win by 122 runs.