West Herts lost any chance of winning the Saracens Herts Premier League for the first time with a lacklustre performance against Old Owens.
Losing the toss for the 13th time out of 15 they were put in the field. The Old Owens innings progressed steadily with Ashwood (47) and Guilbert (63) catching the eye with some crisp drives finding the boundary.
When they were both dismissed the score stood at 144-3. This soon became 193-6 but the Stags appeared unable to finish things off and the visitors finished with a score of 241 all out. Perera finishing with 5-43 and Gurney 3-41.
Whilst this score looked no better than Par, the West Herts batting line up which had appeared so dominant in the first half of the season was out of sorts with no one batsman taking control.
Several batsman reached the 30s mark but did not go on to make a match-winning contribution. Wickets fell regularly and the asking rate went up while the spinners operated. The innings ended in farcical fashion when attempting to accelerate the scoring rate the last three wickets fell in four balls, leaving the Stags 54 runs short.
Elsewhere in the League the 2nd X1 made great strides in protecting their status in Division 2A with a convincing win against Berkhamsted 1st team.
Berkhamsted were in trouble from the start of their innings with some aggressive bowling from Khan (2-29) and Hender (3-37) reducing them to 55-4. Bandali then took over with 4-24 off his 10 overs to reduce the home side to 123 ao.
The Stags did not start their innings well and were stuttering in the chase at 30- 4. However, King ( 41no) and Juneja (34no) saw the visitors home and pushed them up to seventh in the table.
Unfortunately the third X1 did not have such a good day and went down by six wickets in a bottom of the table clash with Wheathampstead in Division 6B.
The 4thX1 had an 101 run win over Sandrifge in Division 9 West with a great all round performance.
West Herts team of the year must be the 5th team who recorded their 13th win of the season with a perfect record of the games played and they now stand 93 points clear at the top of Division 11 West.
Their latest victory was against fourth placed Pinner by 39 runs. A pleasing aspect of their performance is the number of juniors who have participated carefully supported by skipper Dillon Mahawatte.
The 6th team went down to Kings Langley 3rd team in a middle of the table clash in Division 12 West.
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