North Kildare won by 7 wickets
Halverstown wore their green baggy caps emblazoned with the club crest for the first time. Whilst we are not necessarily known for our sartorial elegance we are happy to wear them with pride.
The team had a similar shape to the previous week. However, Darren Ryall who top scored was absent but Trevor Wardrop, fresh from a social team hatrick was back. Ashan who is like the pied piper of Hamlyn Town has secured the services of Wasif for the season along with Moon and Idris. However the latter two were only able to register after the match and were not on the team sheet for this match. Their moment will come.
A sunny day and skipper, Mick Neville, won the toss and elected to bat. Ashmore and Neville did well to avoid succumbing to North Kildare’s opening bowler, Hashmi, whose seam bowling was virtually unplayable. Whilst he didn’t get a wicket he only conceded 6 runs of which 2 ironically were wides. Runs came slowly and wickets tumbled until the redoubtable, Richard Greene, came to the crease. At Thursday’s net session Richard had rejected the bowling machine in favour of the old fashioned ‘throw down’ method of coaching batsmen. After his score of 37 it was hard to argue with him and so we may have a second hand bowling machine for sale. It is worth mentioning that Majeed’s catch that got him out was quite exceptional by any standards. John Threadgold who is perennially reliable scored 25 in the middle order and as he hasn’t been to nets this season the bowling machines life expectancy is diminishing by the minute. We were all out for 134 and Bond who was one of nine bowlers was the pick of them taking 3 wickets.
An excellent tea supplied by Barry set the tone for the rest of the season.
Neville Case opened from the Pavilion End and got some searing bounce, which troubled the openers and was unlucky not to get a wicket. However Messrs Majeed and Machin got into their stride and saw off the opening bowlers. It wasn’t until Wasif Rashid came on that things began to change. He is genuinely quick and can beat the bat. He took 3 impressive wickets but it was not enough to stop North Kildare winning the match by 7 wickets in the 26th over.
We were disappointed not to have made this a better contest and we went for a bit of alcoholic post match analysis, which lifted the mood. The first thing to say is that the standard in Division 13 appears to be higher than Division 12 last year. Curious but true. The pluses for the rest of the season are that Richard found form and Wasif looked extremely dangerous.
Finally a big thank you to Ashan Sayeed who has brought a number of talented players to the team, for the second season in a row, who will hopefully embrace the club ethos.
Full scorecard.
No comments:
Post a Comment