Harry in a hurry for Wardens in huge win at Shrews
B’HAM PREMIER LEAGUE DIVISION ONE
HARRY Johnson’s brilliant 136 steered Kenilworth Wardens to an impressive 81-run Birmingham Premier League Division One win at Shrewsbury.
The 23-year-old dominated the home attack while posting a second top-flight hundred in three weeks and in the process took the visitors to an above-par 284 for six.
Following this win, Wardens lie sixth in the table at the end of the opening five-match section of white ball cricket and this bright start owes plenty to the club’s reshaped seam attack in which Tommy Rex has been the stand-out performer.
And the Warwickshire prospect took his seasonal tally to 14 wickets with a hostile spell in which he claimed 4-25 as Shrewsbury’s run chase slumped from a promising 142 for one to 203 all out.
When last week’s centurion Ali Zaryab fell for 35, Leering’s team were under pressure at 69 for three. However,
Johnson then put together impressive partnerships in the company of Worcestershire hopefuls Cullen and Evitts.
Wardens’ fourth-wicket pair added 83 before their wicket-keeper departed for 34 but better followed as Evitts, who made a fluent even-time 48, joined Johnson in an alliance worth 131.
As he had 14 days earlier during his club’s defeat at Knowle & Dorridge, Johnson was not content to merely reach three figures and as a result went on to log a superb 136 in a 126ball knock containing 11 boundaries and six sixes.
With 93 runs coming from the closing ten overs, the visitors seemed in a strong position on a pitch offering some assistance to the bowlers only for Shrewsbury openers Will Parton and Lewis Evans to race to 58 in 12 overs.
Home skipper Parton, whose fine 110-ball 80 contained nine fours, then added a further 84 with wicketkeeper
Matthew Swift (39) before the introduction of Zaryab’s off-spin checked the flow of runs with the vital wickets of Parton and the dangerous Rob Foster.
And after Chauhan also grabbed two middle-order scalps, Rex bowled fast and full to quickly see off the tail in a 13-ball spell in which he hit the stumps four times.
With Dan Manders unable to bat this meant Shrewsbury were bowled out in the 47th over for 203 while Wardens climbed into the top half of the table alongside a cluster of clubs pursuing unbeaten table-toppers Smethwick.
Leamington who lie two league positions and 12 points behind their South Warwickshire neighbours will also enter next week’s derby clash in good heart following a 40-run home win over Halesowen.
When the hosts were 12 for four in the early stages of the match their eventual total of 286 seemed an
unlikely outcome before Luke de Souza and Ollie Currill combined in a superb 239-run fifth wicket alliance.
Spa’s left-handed opener reached a composed 152-ball 111 before being dismissed late in the piece, but it was the former Gloucestershire allrounder’s 124 which contained nine sixes that really set Arlington Avenue alight.
Eddie Rhodes took 5-47 for the visitors whose top-order then found life equally tricky against Currill and Matt Davison (2-37) and as a result slipped to 18 for three.
Ed Bragg’s steady 70-ball 43 then settled things before former Worcestershire batter Alexei Kervezee launched an impressive counterattack. He struck 13 fours and two sixes in a brilliant 78-ball 103 before being last out with the score at 246 in the 45th over. Skipper Jon Wigley and veteran seamer Tom Warner both grabbed a brace of wickets for the home side.