Greenock face vital match with Dumfries

As the 2017 cricket season moves into its final month, Greenock face another big weekend of cricket. On Saturday, Dumfries are the visitors to Glenpark with both sides uncertain regarding their future in the Premier Division.

Just four league matches remain, and, for Greenock, each will be their most important match of the season as they battle to gain enough points to stay above the relegation places. The local side are currently just seven percent above East Kilbride who occupy second bottom spot.

WDCU CSL Premier Division Table

Dumfries occupy the position immediately above Greenock, but with just a slender four percent advantage, the south of Scotland side is very much part of the relegation struggle and so Saturday's match at Glenpark between the two sides takes on a huge importance.

And although recent results have not gone Greenock's way, there have been a number of changes to the way the team has been set up that have shown encouraging improvement in the its play.

Shailesh Prabhu and Harry Briggs have formed a fresh opening partnership in the batting line-up with Neil Flack and Kyle Scrimegour dropping down the order. Scrimegour fills the number three position and Flack number five.

This reshuffle of the batting order provides greater solidity in the top half of the batting line-up and is an attempt to combat the top middle order collapses which have been a feature of several matches this season.

Prabhu is an experienced opening bat used to dealing with pace bowling and teenager Harry Briggs is maturing into a useful player at the top of the order as his 55 runs at Ayr last Saturday demonstrated.

Scrimegour, who is Greenock's young overseas amateur from Australia, has become used to the Scottish conditions over the past three months and has had a number of good innings but has yet to compile a really major one. He is keen to put that right before the end of August and Saturday would be a perfect time to do it.

Neil Flack began the season in fine form and runs were flowing easily from his bat. However, from mid-June he hit a barren patch where runs were more difficult to compile. That all changed last Saturday at Ayr when his confidence returned and he played a fine innings of 49, only getting out due to the need to score quickly as Greenock chased a challenging DLS target.

While run-scoring has been Greenock's achilles heel at times this season, the team's bowling attack has been one of the best in the Premier Division. Kyle Scrimegour is currently the top equal wicket-taking bowler in the Premier Division with twenty three wickets and Julien Hulbert is just one behind.

Greenock will hope to put the Dumfries batsmen under pressure from the start and if the first few wickets can be captured relatively cheaply then it will be important to push home whatever advantage has been built up.

When the sides met earlier in the season at Nunholm, Greenock batted first and scored their highest total of the season, 250 for the loss of 8 wickets, but that was not enough to win. Dumfries scored 252 for 6, hitting the winning runs with just five balls of the match remaining.

Yet it had seemed a reasonable bet that Greenock would win when Dumfries needed 76 runs with just 9 overs to go and their two top batsmen Tom McBride 89 and Chris Bellwood 39, both out. But Dumfries were not finished and some hard hitting by Josh Forsyth and Stuart Corbett-Byers turned the game on its head as the Greenock bowlers could do little to stem the flow of runs.

A similar situation occurred last Saturday at Ayr when Greenock leaked almost eighty runs from the last six overs of the home side's innings. So, the lesson to be learned is that an innings is not over until it is over. Also, tactically, the team must carefully consider how to approach the tail end overs in order to minimise the opposition run-scoring.

With so little seemingly between the two sides, Saturday's fixture is all set up to provide an interesting and entertaining afternoon of cricket at Glenpark. It just needs some dry, warm and sunny conditions which after three poor weekends of weather is surely not a lot to ask ?

Greenock's team on Saturday is unchanged from last week and the match at Glenpark will start at 12 noon.

The match is kindly sponsored by West of Scotland Insurance Brokers

The Glenpark XI are away to Deanpark (Renfrew's 2nd XI) on Saturday.Having had no game for the last three weeks because of wet weather, the players will be keen to get their game on and get a winning result which would consolidate a mid-table position. But with Deanpark topping the Reserve table at present, a win will be an excellent result. The match at Renfrew will start at 12 noon.

On Sunday afternoon, the Hillend XI have a Sunday League fixture against an Uddingston Development XI. The match is at Glenpark and will begin at 1pm

*** Junior cricketers at Glenpark also have a busy weekend ... if the weather behaves. On Friday evening, the Under-15 team play Clydesdale Under-15s at Glenpark. On Monday evening the Greenock/Helensburgh Under-18s are at home to Clydesdale's Under-18s, while the Under-13s are away to Stirling County Under-13s. All games start at 6.15pm.

Greenock Cricket Club is sponsored this season by Cleaning Supplies 4U.