Cricket: Dulwich win promotion from Surrey Championship Division Two

BY JOHN LEWIS

Dulwich have won promotion from Surrey Championship Division Two after a 69-run victory at Walton-on-Thames last weekend.

Bank of England’s defeat at Oxted means the South Londoners cannot be caught before their final match of the season at home to Dorking.

The Dulwich innings revolved around a patient 62 off 136 balls by James Schofield, his second half century in three matches which equalled his score in the first.

He came in with the total on nine after the early dismissal of Ollie Steele, and took part in stands of 30 for the second wicket with Chris Purshouse, who made 15, 13 for the third with Frankie Brown, who scored six, and 57 for the fourth with Veer Patel, who made 16.

At 109-4 after 35.4 overs some acceleration was needed, and it was provided by Sam Ellison, who contributed 28 off 23 balls in a stand of 40 for the fifth wicket with Schofield in just seven overs.

Former Surrey slow left armer Mark Bainbridge had completed his 10 overs with the miserly figures of 2-11, but the other spinners had proved expensive and it took the return of opening bowler Matthew Nichols to remove Ellison, Schofield, and keeper Robbie Keaton to make it 158-7 after 44.2 overs.

Skipper Jon Lodwick and Ahmed Khan lifted the score to 174 before the other opener Nicky Wilson took the last three wickets in four balls to finish with 4-29. Dulwich had lost their last six wickets for 28 runs to be all out for 177 with three balls of the innings to spare.

Eight of the Dulwich wickets had fallen to the seamers, but Lodwick and Assan Crawford-Khan could not emulate them as skipper Dan Roberts and Evan Beck posted 35 in the first 10 overs.

The picture changed when Brown joined the attack, as he dismissed Roberts with the last ball of his first over and Beck with the second ball of his next.

Fellow left arm spinner Alex Gledhill then struck in his first over and followed up with another in his third.

Brown came off after taking 2-4 off five overs and gave way to leg spinner Ahmed Khan, who became the third spinner to strike in his first over. Another wicket for Khan and two for Gledhill saw Walton reduced to 70-8 in the 28th over, with all eight having gone down in 16 overs for just 33 runs.

Some spirited batting by Wilson and Ben Monk added another 20 before Wilson became Gledhill’s fifth victim, and Monk contributed all 18 runs put on by the last pair before falling to Brown for 26, the highest score of the innings.

Walton were dismissed for 108, coincidentally the same score they had made in the first match between the sides.

Gledhill bowled his 10 overs straight through to finish with 5-21 and took his tally in the last two matches to 12 wickets for just 41 runs.

Brown had 3-18 off 7.2 overs, while Khan took 2-22 off seven.