1st XI no match for powerful Grange

Greenock 1st XI vs Grange
Scottish Cup
Saturday 20th April 2013

Scorecard       

Greenock’s opening competitive match of the 2013 season ended in defeat when the local side went down by six wickets to a strong Grange side from Edinburgh in the first of their Scottish Cup mini-league matches at Glenpark on Saturday.

Grange won the toss and, not surprisingly, eagerly inserted Greenock on a soft, green wicket. Their good fortune with the call was quickly demonstrated when three early wickets reduced the Glenparkers to 15 for 3 after just six overs.

First wicket to fall was young Neil Flack, scorer of an unbeaten fifty last weekend, who was caught at point off the bowling of Raj Routray in the third over. Just three balls later Routray had the prized wicket of Richie Berrington, when the internationalist drove the ball to cover but put it in the air and was smartly caught by Munsey. Greenock skipper, Shailesh Prabhu became Grange’s third early wicket when he edged a ball from Abel Smith and was caught low down at second slip by Gregor Maiden.

Alex Baum and Mark Robertson then gradually moved the score along until Baum provided Abel Smith his second wicket, caught by Worth for 11. Robertson and Jonathan Hempsey both departed with the score in the mid 40s which brought together Chris Hempsey and Waleed Jamal. These two put together a fifty partnership spanning sixteen overs until Jamal was run out having top scored with 30 runs when the total was on 98.

The last three wickets fell cheaply leaving Chris Hempsey stranded on 12 not out when the final Greenock wicket fell in the 34th over with the scoreboard showing that the Glenpark side had managed just 105 runs. For Grange, Abel Smith with 3 for 32 and Ian Worth with 3 for 17 were the two most successful of the Grange bowlers

Needing to get some early wickets, Greenock opened up their bowling reply with Waleed jamal and Richie Berrington. The pace attack got the breakthrough in the fourth over when Berrington took a return catch off his own bowling to remove Munsey for 15. Berrington got his second wicket in the sixth over when Pillai edged a delivery through to wicketkeeper Alex Baum and then in the eighth over it was Berrington again who picked up the Edinburgh side's third wicket when he clean bowled Worth for just one run.

At 35 for the loss of three wickets, Grange were in a spot of bother and when Berrington picked up the wicket of Holmes (22), once again clean bowled, the Edinburgh side were definitely looking shaky.

The fifth wicket partnership between Brock and Poward however made steady inroads towards the fairly meagre Greenock total and in just the twenty-first over of the Grange Innings, Brock powered two shots to the boundary to give the Edinburgh side victory by six wickets.

Berrington with 4 for 25 off 8.3 overs was the only Greenock bowler who was able to cause Grange any bother and so the team from the Stockbridge area in the capital city collected the first two points on offer in this season’s Section F of the competition.

Next Saturday Greenock host Renfrew and then travel to Dundee the following week to play Dundee HSFP for a match which will mark the half way point in the sectional qualifier. Greenock will hope to be at or near full strength for these matches as both overseas players should have arrived by the middle of this week and be in the side for Saturday.