Gidea Park & Romford  227-10

Orsett 228-4

CRICKET: ORSETT’s first string showed their class with both bat and ball at the weekend as they travelled to Gidea Park and came away with a six wicket victory.

Orsett won the toss and elected to bowl. But the home team’s top order proved their worth with Chris Collier posting 40 before the impressive looking first partnership was broken up when Collier was caught by Alex Karkoski off a great ball by George Gibbon.

The rest of the Gidea Park top order also delivered solid performances – although none of them hit any really big innings – and with Peter Maynard (35) Alan Croft (42) and Sarvesh Dame (24) out of the way the Orsett bowlers began to make faster inroads. By the end of the innings the leading wicket taker was spinner Shahid Khan whose six tally (for just 60 runs) had underpinned the Orsett bowling.

He was well backed up by George Gibbon who took 4-90.

But credit must go to the team whose all round performance in the field featured plenty of good catching and two stumpings from Ryan Plom. With the bat Orsett wasted no time in attacking the home team’s total.

And it was Plom who went for Gidea Park as he showed great shot selection and a willingness to go for the boundary as he posted 107 to set Orsett on their way to victory.

The other members of the Orsett top order strugled to keep up with Plom’s batting and several fell by the wayside.

Scott Douglas went for 15, abnd even Alex Karkoski was snagged lbw for just 10 – despite already hitting two fours. Eventually it fell to Kirk Laws (69) to steady the ship and edge the team over the line for the loss of just four wickets Orsett were helped by some pretty loose bowling which saw a total of 18 written in the in the extras column