AHSAN Ali and Khalil Rehman tore through Redbourn’s batting order to record a resounding first win of the season for Old Albanian.

OAs set a modest score for Redbourn to chase but the visitors struggled against the bowling attack – which emulated the feat achieved by England against New Zealand at Lords – as they were dismissed for just 39 runs.

Having won the toss Redbourn inserted OAs and it proved to be a good decision as the conditions favoured the bowlers.

After a 20-run partnership between openers Chris Dobson and Azhet Mehmood the latter was bowled by Darren Bassill (4-36). He followed up with Jack Reynold’s (2) wicket four runs later.

Zahid Khan contributed a quick 21 off 22 balls as OA reached the 50-run mark only to chip Jon Flemming to square leg. And OAs only added 16 runs for the next two wickets: Dave Irwin catching Zahid Khan (21) and Zahid Karim (0) off Bassill’s bowling.

At 66-5 Mozammal Hayat came to the rescue for the second week running – he scored 61 against Potters Bar – with a well-crafted 52.

His partners perished but a stand of 27 for the ninth wicket with Rehman (11), the highest of the innings, took OAs into the batting points before the innings ended in the 47th over for a total of 148.

With 53 overs to overhaul the total, Redbourn got off to the worst possible start against the spin of Ali and the medium pace of Rehman.

The wicket was not wielding runs freely and it took six overs for Redbourn to put seven on the board. Seven overs later, with 19 runs on the board, Ali made the breakthrough, beating Geoff Tookey (6).

The next two wickets fell for no more runs as George Naismith (12) was run out by Dobson and Daniel Roe (0) was caught by Karim. From then on the wickets fell thick as fast as only Chris Godfrey (11) joined Naismith in reaching double figures in an innings that featured five ducks.

Rehman and Ali finished with figures of 5-19 and 3-20 respectively.

Final score: Old Albanian (148) beat Redbourn (39) by 109 runs.

The win lifted OAs to sixth in the table, on 58 points alongside Ickleford, their next opponents, and only 15 points behind league headers Eversholt.