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Men's match reports Saturday 6 September
Katie Field8 Sep 2025 - 18:50
All three Horley Cricket Club men’s league teams finished fourth in their divisions this year.
Horley 2nd XI beat Salfords
The 1st XI ended the season with a defeat at Sutton 2nd XI, who won the Surrey Division Four East title, and the Horley 2nd XI rounded off with a big win over Salfords in Division Eight. The 3rd XI had finished their Sussex Division 10 West season the week before.
The situation for the 1st XI at the start of play on Saturday was that Horley had to beat champions-elect Sutton and hope bottom of the table Cheam could beat second-placed London Gymkhana (which was highly improbable, and did not happen) in order to snatch a promotion spot. There was some hope of the former as Horley had beaten Sutton at Horley Row quite convincingly.
The match started sub optimally when Ben Remfry was given out for a duck supposedly caught behind to a ball that seemed to have hit his shoulder, and it didn’t get much better. Captain Regan Derham contributed 33 before being stumped and Luke Smith scored 30 before attempting a reverse sweep and being bowled. The rest came and went as Horley reached a miserly total of 131 all out in 40.2 overs.
There was some hope when Will Taylor bowled Connor Griffin for a duck but then Sutton tucked into the Horley attack and opener Sam Woods and number three Aarav Rajnikanth both scored half centuries finishing on 73 not out and 51 not out respectively to take Sutton to 135 in 20 overs.
The 2025 season has been a good one for the 1st XI, if not a great one. There have been some amazing wins and one or two sub-optimal defeats. Having finished fourth, 25 points behind second-placed Gymkhana, promotion is within the grasp of this group of players in 2026.
Horley 2nd XI ended up fourth in Surrey Division Eight East after a comfortable 89-run last-day win against Salfords, who were relegated.
Horley were put in on a damp wicket which proved to be a bit sticky and difficult.
They lost Henrick Cook, bowled in the second over for 4 but moved on to 62 by the time Aryan Patel left a straight one and was bowled for 18 in the 14th over.
Three more batters were also bowled, first Ben Stewart for 8, then Toby Davie for 39 and Richard Waddington for 10 and Horley were 95-5 with the damage done by Sohail Shah (2-37), Abdul Waris Azizi, Glen Zangel (1-42) and Harry Roberts.
Just two more runs were added before Ant Puttick was caught by John Holman off Roberts (2-20), then Matt Reid and Alex Field rebuilt with a stand of 30 for the seventh wicket.
From a steady start, they began to accelerate. Field was dropped at short cover in the 32nd over and flicked a lovely six to square leg in the 33rd before Reid was bowled by Samuel Lee for 15 in the 34th over.
Field fell for 16, caught by Holman off Lee (2-13) two overs later and Horley were still short of where they wanted to be at 133-8 with nine overs remaining.
Irfaan Baksh and Chris Webber are both better batters than their positions at nine and ten in the order suggest and they showed their skills, putting on 56 for the ninth wicket with some powerful attacking shots.
Baksh made 31 off 28 balls (five fours) before he was bowled by Ollie Holman (1-36) off the last ball of the 43rd over and Will Hofmann was bowled four balls later by Azizi (2-25) to end Horley's innings on 194 all out. Webber was 33 not out (27 balls, five fours).
Webber bowled John Holman with the first ball of the reply and Field took the second wicket in the 12th over, having Shah caught by Webber for 14 as a just reward for a good spell of nine overs for 29 runs.
Webber was ringing the changes with the bowlers at the other end in search of more wickets and Stewart struck in the 21st over, bowling Rob Besley, who had scored 34 off 63 balls.
Stewart’s spell was quite extraordinary, as his first five overs were all maidens and he picked up his second wicket in the 23rd over of the match, bowling Lee, to finish with figures of 2-1 from six overs.
Hofmann bowled Ed Humphrey in between Stewart’s two wickets then claimed two more victims in the 28th over, trapping Zangel lbw and having Abdur Razzaq caught by Stewart for 13, for figures of 3-23 from six overs.
By then, Salfords were 89-7 and that became 91-8 when Baksh bowled Jinish Patel in the next over. When Ollie Holman was also bowled by Baksh two overs later, the end was nigh and Webber wrapped it up, holding a towering catch off Baksh (3-11 from three overs) to dismiss Azizi at the end of the 33rd over and end Salfords’ innings on 105.
With the Surrey leagues having been restructured before the start of this season, clubs were bound to be finding their level this summer and Salfords finished bottom of the league and were relegated.
Horley just weren’t consistent enough across the season and their batting was too often below par. Nine wins and six losses out of 18 matches (three were rained off) was short of their pre-season ambitions, but they did beat Banstead, who finished second, so Horley can hope to do better in 2026.
After a win over Crawley in their final Sussex Division Ten West match the previous weekend, Horley 3rd XI’s hopes of promotion remained alive, but they needed both Horsham Trinity and Crawley to lose their final matches on Saturday. As it was, they both won so Horley missed out on promotion by 16 points. As with the 1sts and 2nds, they can go into the 2026 season optimistic about their chances of a top-two finish.
The situation for the 1st XI at the start of play on Saturday was that Horley had to beat champions-elect Sutton and hope bottom of the table Cheam could beat second-placed London Gymkhana (which was highly improbable, and did not happen) in order to snatch a promotion spot. There was some hope of the former as Horley had beaten Sutton at Horley Row quite convincingly.
The match started sub optimally when Ben Remfry was given out for a duck supposedly caught behind to a ball that seemed to have hit his shoulder, and it didn’t get much better. Captain Regan Derham contributed 33 before being stumped and Luke Smith scored 30 before attempting a reverse sweep and being bowled. The rest came and went as Horley reached a miserly total of 131 all out in 40.2 overs.
There was some hope when Will Taylor bowled Connor Griffin for a duck but then Sutton tucked into the Horley attack and opener Sam Woods and number three Aarav Rajnikanth both scored half centuries finishing on 73 not out and 51 not out respectively to take Sutton to 135 in 20 overs.
The 2025 season has been a good one for the 1st XI, if not a great one. There have been some amazing wins and one or two sub-optimal defeats. Having finished fourth, 25 points behind second-placed Gymkhana, promotion is within the grasp of this group of players in 2026.
Horley 2nd XI ended up fourth in Surrey Division Eight East after a comfortable 89-run last-day win against Salfords, who were relegated.
Horley were put in on a damp wicket which proved to be a bit sticky and difficult.
They lost Henrick Cook, bowled in the second over for 4 but moved on to 62 by the time Aryan Patel left a straight one and was bowled for 18 in the 14th over.
Three more batters were also bowled, first Ben Stewart for 8, then Toby Davie for 39 and Richard Waddington for 10 and Horley were 95-5 with the damage done by Sohail Shah (2-37), Abdul Waris Azizi, Glen Zangel (1-42) and Harry Roberts.
Just two more runs were added before Ant Puttick was caught by John Holman off Roberts (2-20), then Matt Reid and Alex Field rebuilt with a stand of 30 for the seventh wicket.
From a steady start, they began to accelerate. Field was dropped at short cover in the 32nd over and flicked a lovely six to square leg in the 33rd before Reid was bowled by Samuel Lee for 15 in the 34th over.
Field fell for 16, caught by Holman off Lee (2-13) two overs later and Horley were still short of where they wanted to be at 133-8 with nine overs remaining.
Irfaan Baksh and Chris Webber are both better batters than their positions at nine and ten in the order suggest and they showed their skills, putting on 56 for the ninth wicket with some powerful attacking shots.
Baksh made 31 off 28 balls (five fours) before he was bowled by Ollie Holman (1-36) off the last ball of the 43rd over and Will Hofmann was bowled four balls later by Azizi (2-25) to end Horley's innings on 194 all out. Webber was 33 not out (27 balls, five fours).
Webber bowled John Holman with the first ball of the reply and Field took the second wicket in the 12th over, having Shah caught by Webber for 14 as a just reward for a good spell of nine overs for 29 runs.
Webber was ringing the changes with the bowlers at the other end in search of more wickets and Stewart struck in the 21st over, bowling Rob Besley, who had scored 34 off 63 balls.
Stewart’s spell was quite extraordinary, as his first five overs were all maidens and he picked up his second wicket in the 23rd over of the match, bowling Lee, to finish with figures of 2-1 from six overs.
Hofmann bowled Ed Humphrey in between Stewart’s two wickets then claimed two more victims in the 28th over, trapping Zangel lbw and having Abdur Razzaq caught by Stewart for 13, for figures of 3-23 from six overs.
By then, Salfords were 89-7 and that became 91-8 when Baksh bowled Jinish Patel in the next over. When Ollie Holman was also bowled by Baksh two overs later, the end was nigh and Webber wrapped it up, holding a towering catch off Baksh (3-11 from three overs) to dismiss Azizi at the end of the 33rd over and end Salfords’ innings on 105.
With the Surrey leagues having been restructured before the start of this season, clubs were bound to be finding their level this summer and Salfords finished bottom of the league and were relegated.
Horley just weren’t consistent enough across the season and their batting was too often below par. Nine wins and six losses out of 18 matches (three were rained off) was short of their pre-season ambitions, but they did beat Banstead, who finished second, so Horley can hope to do better in 2026.
After a win over Crawley in their final Sussex Division Ten West match the previous weekend, Horley 3rd XI’s hopes of promotion remained alive, but they needed both Horsham Trinity and Crawley to lose their final matches on Saturday. As it was, they both won so Horley missed out on promotion by 16 points. As with the 1sts and 2nds, they can go into the 2026 season optimistic about their chances of a top-two finish.
Further reading