Boars held but remain unbeaten

9:27am Wednesday 14th May 2008

Bromsgrove (13pts) 214-8
Shrewsbury (6pts) 152-6
Match drawn

IN their first home game of the season, Bromsgrove maintained their unbeaten start in Birmingham and District League Division One with a winning draw.

Bromsgrove made two changes to their line-up with Tom Green and returning Pakistani overseas player Dilawar Khan Orakzai replacing absentees Nick Husbands and Valeed Butt.

Asked to bat first on a good wicket, Bromsgrove had the worst possible start with Alexi Kervezee (pictured) out from the first delivery of the day, edging to Daniel Manders at slip off Jack Shantry's bowling.

Omar Ali and Jayden Levitt (77) started to rebuild the innings and moved the score along to 35, before Omar chipped a ball from the spin of Green to Ed Foster at midwicket.

Will Lake struggled against the spin and went for one and at 39-3 Bromsgrove looked to be in trouble.

However, Lyndon Jones (27) joined Levitt, and the pair put on 81 runs before Levitt was caught behind, while Jones eventually went LBW.

Green made 12 before the partnership of Duncan Roke and captain Mark Evenson came together with the score on 141-6.

The pair rotated the strike well with some fine running between the wickets.

Roke (20) finally fell with the score now 195 with three overs remaining.

Evenson accelerated the scoring, hitting 18 of the next 19 runs, reaching his 50 in the progress.

The visitors' reply began with Kervezee achieving a unique double, being out first ball with the bat then taking the prized wicket of Foster with his first delivery.

After only 10 overs, captain Evenson threw the ball to Dilawar and it didn't take the leg spinner long to slow the run rate down.

Working in tandem with Jones, the pair conceded just eight runs from the next seven overs.

The Shrewsbury batsmen were never able to get up to the run rate required to win the match, and survival rather than victory appeared to be their policy when after 28 overs they were 83-3.

Daniel Rees (37) went LBW to Dilawar straight ball and Merrick was run out for 19.

Gale (7) was then caught by Kervezee off Dilawar's bowling, while Jones took a double strike, firstly with Shantry (52) hitting out to Will Lake, followed quickly by Manders who was bowled when trying to reverse sweep.

Dilawar and Jones bowled a total of 46 overs between them at a run rate of just 2.3 an over and showed they are capable of causing plenty of problems.

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