South Asian Cricket Academy beat Northamptonshire Second XI by 155 runs in a testing match at Overstone.
The opening partnership proved tough to break on Day One as Shah and Perera racked up 95 runs between them before Shah was trapped lbw by Alex Miller.
Perera continued to score runs before he was also trapped lbw by Brandon Glover, after Luke Procter bowled both M Ahmed and H Ahmed in one superb over.
Simon Kerrigan stepped up to bowl AM Ali who had formed a 146-run partnership with Akram. Glover then continued his contributions soon after, catching Akram off the bowling of Thurston.
Key wickets for Charlie Thurston and Jack White followed to ensure the SACA total didn’t run away from Northamptonshire.
Despite Brandon Glover taking the two wickets needed to end the SACA innings early on Day Two, the batting response stuttered as only Gay and Birkhead reached double figures from the first seven batters.
Glover dug deep to post an impressive 47 from 32 balls, but the damage was already done as Northamptonshire ended all out for 153.
SACA posted 167 quickly to add to their total, with Perera falling just seven runs short of a century, before declaring 167/4.
Emilio Gay was unfortunately run out at the start of Northamptonshire’s response. However, Alex Miller and Charlie Thurston built up an efficient 50-run partnership to get the chase underway.
Procter continued the positive momentum on Day Three, building a 107-run partnership with Ryan Rickelton who was making his Steelbacks debut, before climbing to 76 runs.
Despite impressive work from the pair, once Procter was bowled by Sabir the chase proved to be too high and the middle order struggled to form another meaningful partnership.
Brandon Glover completed what has been a fruitful three days personally with 25 runs off 14 balls. However, Northamptonshire fell to defeat by 155 runs when Uttley was bowled by Sabir for 0.