Parikh drives Loughborough win

Loughborough Town went clear at the top of the Everards Leicestershire Premier League and remain on course for an unprecedented treble following their seven wicket victory away to Illston Abbey.

On a green flat wicket, Illston batted first and made slow progress on a slow pitch with the half century coming up in the 21st over but the next over saw the first breakthrough as Man of the Match Viviak Parikh took the first of his five wickets.

Illston had a good platform to build a decent score but a second wicket for Parikh and one for Martin Gidley stemmed any planned acceleration and after 31 overs, the home side were 90 for three.

After 48 overs, the score had moved on to 165 for eight but Parikh mopped up the final two wickets in the 49th over to leave them 169 all out from 49 overs with Parikh taking 5-54.

Town's reply was a one man show. Parikh came in following the loss of an early wicket in the third over with the score on seven then totally demolished the Illston attack hitting seven fours and eight sixes from 43 balls in 47 minutes

He was eventually stumped with the score on 125 in just the 13th over but James Taylor took up where Parikh left off, adding an unbeaten 44. Town lost one more wicket but Mitchell Buck's huge six in the 21st over saw Town comfortably home taking maximum 24pts.