3rd XI v NPL 3rd XI

Widanapathirana's 95 Sets Up Commanding Sonning Win Over NPL

Sonning's 3rd XI produced their most complete performance of the season at home to NPL, a superb innings of 95 from Shamitha Widanapathirana lifting the hosts to 207 for 6 before the bowlers dismantled the visitors for 123 to seal victory by 84 runs.

Mark Lilley won the toss and had no hesitation in batting, though the early exchanges belonged to the NPL attack. The opening stand was broken with only 13 on the board, and Wazir Khan's watchful 12 was ended when the score reached 48, David McCormick and his colleagues keeping the scoring tight through a disciplined first hour that included three maidens from McCormick's seven overs.

Widanapathirana had other ideas. Coming in at number three, he played with a freedom nobody else quite matched, striking 17 fours in a 101-ball innings and scoring at close to a run a ball on a day when runs were far from straightforward. Nearly three quarters of his total came in boundaries, and he found willing company in Muhammad Zameer, whose brisk 18 helped add 49 for the fourth wicket before the score reached 108.

The innings was defined by what followed. William Hibberdine joined Widanapathirana and the pair put on 95 for the fifth wicket, a stand that took the game away from NPL and carried Sonning to 203. Widanapathirana eventually fell five short of a hundred, an innings that deserved the extra runs, while Hibberdine finished unbeaten on 41 from 60 balls, an innings of good sense and steady accumulation that held the middle order together. Mehar Ali Kaleem's late four ball ensured Sonning closed on 207 for 6.

Max Miller was the pick of the NPL bowlers with 3 for 61 from his full ten overs, and Paddy McNicol claimed two, but 34 extras added a useful cushion to the home total.

The defence of it was emphatic. Mehar Ali Kaleem and Michael Longridge opened up with real control, Longridge conceding just 11 runs from six overs and Kaleem picking up a wicket in a spell that cost only 20. NPL slipped to a position from which they never recovered, and when the change bowlers arrived the wickets came in a rush. Shahid Imtiaz took 4 for 35 and Muhammad Zameer matched him with 4 for 44, the two of them accounting for eight of the ten dismissals between them. Mohamad Shahbaz's two overs cost a solitary couple of runs.

Miller offered the sternest resistance with 45, a fine effort in a losing cause and a fitting reward for his earlier work with the ball, but the innings folded around him. Mark Lilley took the final wicket to end matters at 123 in the thirty-first over, capping a day on which Sonning were the better side in every department.