Ilford Catholic celebrated a hat-trick of wins in their latest league outings at the weekend.

The first team were out of action, but the seconds beat Purleigh by two wickets.

Winning the toss on a greenish pitch, they chose to bowl first and Aravinth Ponnusamy (3-42) found his rhythm straightaway and got the breakthrough.

Opener Chris Freegard (119) survived a few close calls in a brilliant century and had support from skipper Steve Rynn (35) but Aravinth and Sakthivel Ganesan (3-39) in their second spells ran through the rest of the line-up to restrict the hosts to 222-7.

In reply, the Catholic top order made a steady start, through skipper Balamurugan Rajagopal (42) and Sanjay Agnihotri (28).

And a stroke filled 91-run partnership from the left-right combination of Manoj Surendar (56) and Dinesh Kumar (50) placed Catholics comfortably to chase down the target with one over to spare.

The thirds beat Canvey Island seconds by seven wickets, after also fielding first.

Louis Morgan (1-8) and Vicky Phogat (0-28) shared the new ball and Nomi Qureshi (1-33) had success as Karan Shah held a catch.

However, it turned out to be Venkat Thiagarajan’s day, with him taking 4-17 to leave the hosts on 129-8 after their 40 overs.

In reply Martin Riches (33) and Saurabh Penkar (61) got ICCC off to a solid start and at 79-1 things looked good.

Nishanth Parupalli hit some lusty blows in a quickfire 16 and it was left to the Shah brothers Karan and Chintan to seal victory.

The fourths completed the treble with a 117-run triumph over Maldon fifths.

ICCC ran up a healthy total of 193-6, with the main scorers being Tariq Noori (50), Anil Gupta (39) Jeevakan Kumar (31), Dave Hobbs (23) and Anand Kumar (22*).

In reply, Maldon lost early wickets, but some determined batting by the lower order took them to a total of 76, well short of the target.

Top bowlers were Sunny Kuruvilla (3-4) and Venusharan Krishnakumar (3-10).