Patels swing an English cricket match

London:

Stand aside Smiths, Browns and Joneses - make way for the Patels on the English village green.

It was a case of Patel c Patel b Patel as the Dewsbury Young Stars, a northern England side, fielded an all-Patel team and their rivals Warwickshire turned out with three Patels of their own in a league match in Dewsbury at the end of July.

But unlike eight years ago, when two all-Patel cricket teams in Bradford - the Leuva Patidar Samaj (LPS) and long time rivals Amarmilan - left scorers and umpires scratching their heads in confusion, this Gujarati foray was greeted with no more than a shrug of the shoulder.

Happily, this time around, the two scorers were named - you guessed it - Patel and Patel.

Yunus Patel, who plays for the Young Stars and is also the club secretary, told the Daily Mirror: "We should change the name to Patel XI but the Dewsbury Young Stars' name has been going for so long we will keep it."

"A lot of our team originates from India but none of the players are related and it's just a coincidence."

The team, aged from 18 to mid-30s, play in West Yorkshire's Dewsbury District League Section B, and held out for a thrilling one-wicket win at the July-end match, the Mirror reported Monday.

Patel is the most common ethnic Indian name in Britain, followed by Singh and Shah.

Patels, who are originally from Gujarat, mostly came to Britain in the late '70s from East Africa and have built up large and prosperous settlements in Wembley, a suburb of London, and Leicester, a city in southeast England.

Admired across Britain for their entrepreneurial flair, the Patels have also begun making inroads into the world of cricket, with 24-year-old Nottinghamshire all-rounder Samit Patel having debuted for England last year.