By Ernest Ndunda

Former champions Jaffery Sports Club "A" enhanced their chances of lifting the Coast Cricket Association Provincial League after a successful weekend.

Jaffery "A", who hosted Burhania Sports Club, decided to bat first but the decision proved

Batsman Manoj Patel of Coast Pekee (right) in action at the Crownberger Regional Cricket tournament match at the Nairobi Gymkhana. [Photo: File /Standard]

disastrous for the opponents whose line up found it difficult to create partnerships of any semblance as they folded for 126 runs.

Hussein Mukarram (30) and Yusuf Vejlani (20) showed some resistance and Jaffery had little difficulties in folding up the match.

Mohamed Fazal (82) and Shehryar Akram (42) completed the score in the opening stand in 14 over to allow Jaffery win the match by 10 wickets.

Pegged back

In the tussle between Mombasa Sports Club and Coast Gymkhana Sports Club "A" at the latter’s ground, Gymkhana Sports Club won the toss and was almost pegged back immediately as their prolific opener Vandan Patel was routed early.

Manoj Patel profited from some slack fielding to register 43 valuable runs. The top half of the Coast Gymkhana middle order could not come to terms with Mombasa Sports Club’s attack and it was left to newcomer Nirav Pandya, who put some respectability to the score of 68 with more sixes than boundaries.

Coast Gymkhana ended up with below-par 179 in their innings.

Vinit Shikotra, the Mombasa Sports Club off spinner, profited with 5/41. Jignesh Hirani (47) and Vishal Shikotra (33) were the only ones from the star-studded Mombasa Sports Club batting squad that lived up to expectation as they folded for 150 to lose by 29 runs.

The last game saw Simba Union host Mombasa Heats at Burhani Sports Club’s astro-turf.

Simba won the toss and elected to bat on the batsman friendly pitch, but things did not work in favour of Simba as the prolific run scorer Khan Talha, was the only one who realised 78 runs.

This was aptly reflected by extras standing at 38, being the second highest score. Tim Jensz added three wickets to his tally, while all-rounders Jeremy Fernandez and Bruce Phillips bagged two wickets apiece.

However, Simba reached a score of some semblance, realising 198 for Mombasa Heats to chase.

Simba’s bowling and fielding was in contrast to their batting as two run outs earlier on pegged back the Mombasa Heats batting line-up.

Talha Khan bagging 2/4 and Zuher Ladak 2/17 and the steady Harmeet Singh 1/8 in 5 over ensured Mombasa Heats did not breach the 100 mark as they folded for a paltry 70 all out in just over an hour of the chase getting underway.