Coach & Horses made it four wins from four as they defeated league leaders Centurion Cricket Academy by 114 runs in the North East London League.

Coach won the toss and chose to bat, with Sam Whatman (60) and Robbie Jacobs (7) seeing off some hostile opening bowling by the CCA attack, led by Sani Khan.

Ted Datta consolidated the Coach innings with a fluent 54, laying the platform for Chris Austin, who was returning for his first match of the season and blasted 59 in the last 10 overs.

Despite a fine spell of spin bowling by CCA skipper Sha Shahid (3-28), Coach set a challenging target, finishing on 228 all out in the penultimate over.

Following the interval, Coach struck early with seamer Hugo Boatright dismissing CCA’s opening batsman and serial century-maker Shipon Nis for 17.

A fine all-round effort then saw CCA dismissed for just 114 with eight overs to spare. Notable bowling performances came from Edgar Maddicott (15-2), who bowled with a shoulder injury, and Sabri Hasan (19-2) who polished off the tail.

At London Fields, LFCC beat Clapton & Oval by 13 runs in a hugely exciting game.

LFCC won the toss and opted to bat, and openers Robin Friend (77) and Kapila Perera (30) built a large opening stand – but Clapton restricted the run-rate so that LFCC were on 103 at the halfway stage.

Adam Graham and Jason Lord (33) continued to build the total before Jim O’Reilly bowled Lord, bringing Arthur Smart to the crease.

Smart (30 not out) and Graham (56no) accelerated the run-rate further to take London Fields to 252-4 after 36 overs.

Clapton & Oval’s top order batted solidly, giving away few chances and Nick Kelly (97) and Marcus Elwin (44) set the platform for their colleagues to finish the job.

Looking like the favourites and bringing the run- rate down to the required seven per over, it seemed Clapton had done enough to get across the line.

But with LFCC starting to take their catches and rotating their bowlers, suddenly wickets started to fall.

Ben Sanders bowled six overs, taking four wickets and changing the game as Clapton & Oval fell agonisingly short by 13 runs.

Finally, the game at Millfields between Baring Up and Camel CC was dominated by an excellent individual performance from BU captain Robin McKeown, who carried his bat on the way to a magnificent unbeaten 147.

In reply, Camel managed to get up on the run-rate at the halfway stage, but Baring took regular wickets and finished off their opposition with Camel 58 runs short.