Greenock lose high-scoring friendly with Renfrew

 Scorecard       

Greenock's pre-season programme of warm up matches was completed on Saturday with the visit of Renfrew to Glenpark. And for the second weekend, the weather played its part with dry and sunny weather perfect for cricket. In a good high scoring game it was the visitors who emerged as winners.

The Glenpark side batted first and after a sluggish start losing two wickets in just the first five overs, the innings developed well thanks to a fine partnership between Tom Nicholson and Gregor Chambers.

The two home batsmen put on 117 runs in 23 overs with Nicholson the dominant player. The young Australian was heading for a well deserved century, and had scored fourteen boundaries in his innings of 82, when he was caught off the bowling of Shahid Abbassi.

Nicholson has made a very encouraging start to his cricketing summer with Greenock. In the three warm up matches he has scored a total of 155 runs and shown that he will be a key player for the local side this season.

With the loss of Nicholson in the twenty eighth over, Greenock needed someone to keep up the momentum which had been developed by the partnership and Gregor Chambers was up to the task.

By the time the innings closed at the end of the 40th over, Greenock had reached 172 for the loss of 5 wickets with Chambers not out on 54.

Renfrew made a sound start to their innings with opening batsmen Gautam Kakar and Israr Hussein putting together a promising partnership. But both batsmen were out with the score on 41.

Four more wickets fell in the following seven overs as the visitors tumbled to 90 for 6 wickets and when the Ferrymen were 128 for 8 after 34 overs it looked as though Greenock would gain their second win from the three early season warm-up matches.

However, Imran Malik with 35 not out and a swashbuckling 16 not out from tailender Waqas Arshad took the visitors to victory with just nine balls of the match remaining. Needing thirteen runs to win Arshad smashed two boundaries and a six hit out of the ground from the first three balls of the 39th over to give the Renfrew men the win.

Greenock used no fewer than eight bowlers as home team captain Greg McDougall opted to give as many of his side the opportunity for some match experience. Ryan Walker with 3 wickets for 26 runs from 6 overs was Greenock's most successful bowler.

Next Saturday is the start of the league programme. Former Western Union opponents Kilmarnock will be Greenock's opponents opening match in the First Division with the game being played at Glenpark.