London Maccabi Vale were beaten by 10 runs by Crouch End in a friendly.

Following heavy overnight rain the Crouch End wicket was hard but a little damp and LMV captain Jonathan Lederman had no hesitation in deciding to bowl first on winning the toss.

Excellent opening spells from both Simon Renshaw and Jonathan Freedman, who also managed to nip out a couple of batsmen, immediately put Crouch End on the back foot.

However deciding to give youth an early chance, which may not have been the wisest move in retrospect, Joshua Brickmanand Gideon Gale were unable to make any further inroads until Gale’s last over. At the half way stage Crouch End were on 100-3.

Lederman then bowled an extremely aggressive spell with no luck, especially when the opening bat clearly gloved the ball to the keeper but was not given the finger treatment by the umpire.

David Marks replaced Gideon (1-29 from 7 overs) at the bottom end and twirled his magic for an excellent spell of 2-24 from 6 overs. Freedy came back to pick up another wicket to end with 3-28 (only another 9 required to reach 500 for the club). However the fielding was not as good as it needed to be, meaning that LMV were left to chase 204 to win the match.

Unfortunately for LMV, as the wicket dried out it was getting harder to bat on, and 204 was certainly going to be a tough target. Jeff Permutt and Jeremy Harris opened the batting.

Harris soon departed, cutting straight into gulley's hands, 25-1 after 10 overs. Jonathan Cantor joined Permutt as LMV started to accelerate and manage another 28 in the next 10 overs, until Permutt was dismissed. 57-2 becomes 69-3 when Cantor, having been dropped a couple of times trying to get things moving, is bowled off the inside edge.

It was now almost impossible to score at the bottom end now, as anything not on the stumps was rolling along the deck. Crouch End have worked that out and are bowling 2 ft outside off stump.

Jonathan Lederman and Daniel Caplan struggled to keep up with the required run rate required. Despite this both are soon pushing the ball round the field and taking kamikaze runs to try and get the innings moving.

The 50 stand comes up in 30th over, but the rate is now into double figures. 14 runs off the 31st over and 15 off the 32nd, brings the rate down slightly.

Only 18 runs come off the next three overs, and the rate goes shooting up again. 48 required off dive overs, both batters can hardly stand up though. nine off the 36th, but disaster in the 37th as Lederman is caught in the covers for 37, having put on 99 with Cappers in 13 overs.

Freeds comes in and plays the shot of the day with a superb cover drive, worthy of Michael Vaughan. Caplan reaches a brilliant 50, but barely has the strength to raise his bat in acknowledgement and is out soon after for a valiant 57. Still the runs keep coming but unable to keep up with an ever increasing run rate, we end up on 193-6 at the end.

Crouch End 203-7 beat LMV 2nd XI 193-6 by 10 runs in a 40 over a side match.