3 September 2014

By Charles Randall

Sunbury will be hoping to recreate glory days before the present players were born when they meet Sandiacre Town in the final of the Royal London National Club Championship at the Bristol County Ground on 14 September.

Both clubs have won this competition before, with Sandiacre taking the title back to Debyshire in 2003, but Sunbury's success against Tunbridge Wells at Lord's happened way back in 1974.

Sunbury earned their place in the final with a comfortable seven-wicket home win over Brentwood, thanks mainly to two of their former Middlesex batsmen Adam London and David Nash.

The previous day Brentwood had smashed Wanstead & Snaresbrook's hopes of taking the Essex Premier League title – leaving Chingford as champions for the first time – but at Sunbury their batting never achieved dominance after Tom Oakley's breezy 50 at the top of the order.

Brentwood's below par total of 184 all out reflected good all-round bowling, most notably from the former South Africa Under-17 seam-bowling all-rounder Justin Granger with figures of 5-1-8-2. Sunbury slipped to 82-3 after two early wickets from Max Osborne, but London (89 not out) and Nash (49 not out) swept their team home in only 38.5 overs, more than six overs to spare.

Sandiacre's total of 194 proved just too much for visiting Chorley, twice previous winners, and they won an exciting match by 35 runs.

On Monday evening at the Leicester County Ground, the day after the National semi-final, another Sunbury team played a final when the under-19s lost to Bexley in the inaugural ECB youth T20 competition by 59 runs. Bexley's 146-7 was built around excellent batting from Matthew Stiddart (49) and George Haley (48), and that total proved more than enough.