SHINFIELD earned their seventh win of the campaign as they defeated bottom of the table Strafield Turgis/Hartley Wespall by five wickets.
Stratfield were put into bat first and the hosts made a promising start to the innings as they dismissed opening batsman and Stratfield captain Daniel Spence for a duck, judged lbw from the bowling of Shashank Garg.
John Synodinos and Chris Butcher formed a good bond to recover from the early dismissal as they put a decent amount of runs on the board. Garg claimed his second wicket of the game as Synodinos fell for 21 runs.
With Vingesh Vaidyanathan at the crease, Stratfield were able to add to their total as Butcher surpassed a half century before falling for 58 runs and Vaidyanathan went having contributed 37 runs for his side.
Jay Deshmukh batting.
Stratfield didn’t manage to put on too many more runs despite having plenty of wickets to spare as they ended their 45 overs with a total of 173-6.
Shinfield lost two early wickets as they made an unsteady start to their chase, with Michael Page being bowled out for a duck and shortly after Fakhir Ali was bowled lbw by tom Clay after scoring only two runs.
Jay Deshmukh remained at the crease but his search for a long-term partner continued as Naveed Naseer was dismissed for eight.
Noel Joseph joined Deshmukh into bat and the pair enjoyed a good partnership as Deshmukh reached his half century before being bowled out by Synodinos. Shinfield progressed strongly towards surpassing the total set by Stratfield as Joseph and Muhammad Hafeez scored well to put the victory in reach.
Hafeez fell for 36 runs, but with five wickets still left to spare, Shinfield cruised to the finish line as Joseph rounded off his impressive innings with 56 not out with the hosts surpassing the first innings target after 37.3 overs.
Batsman enjoys the sun while waiting for his turn to play.
Shinfield have now won the most games in the division, having picked up their seventh triumph in eight matches but remain behind first place Berkshire County Sports because of a points penalty given at the start of the season.
Shinfield batting: Page 0, Deshmukh 50, Ali 2, Naseer 8, Joseph 56no, Hafeez 36, Shukla 3no, Garg dnb, Rawal dnb, Safdar dnb, Nair dnb
Shinfield bowling: Garg 2-13, Shukla 2-34, Safdar 0-19, Hafeez 0-50, Nair 1-25, Deshmukh 0-16, Naseer 0-9
