The 1st XI face a 'must-win' encounter with Stirling

The 1st XI continue their search for a second Western Premiership One league win on Saturday at Glenpark when Stirling County provide the opposition. Before last weekend's matches County propped up the league table, but a fine win over Prestwick elevated them to seventh and the 1st XI dropped to bottom spot.

Four teams, Stirling, Dumfries, Uddingston and Greenock have become a little bit separated from the top six, but a couple of wins for any of them would see them jump up into a mid-table position.

Last Saturday, County won the toss against Prestwick and batted first on a very hot afternoon and rattled up their best score of the season 268 for 6. A brilliant opening partnership of 151 runs from team captain Matthew Tweedie and Amir Shahzad in just 29 overs set the team up for the high score.

The match was almost a carbon copy of the 1st XI's match against Stenhousemuir last Saturday. Prestwick lost the toss, fielded for 50 overs in the hot sun and then lost a number of early wickets as they began their run-chase and ultimately ended well short of the target set.

Assuming that the weather reamins very warm and sunny (there is some doubt about that), captain Greg McDougall will be hoping that three things work out in favour of his side. Firstly, County captain Matt Tweedie gets his call wrong at the coin toss. Secondly, that his side can for the first time this season make a strong start to their innings. And thirdly, that the team can go on and score a total close to 300 runs.

Stirling made a winning start to the league season by beating the much fancied Clydesdale team but then suffered a run of four defeats which ended last weekend with their win over Prestwick.

Tweedie and Shahzad are their two top batsmen. If either, or both, can be removed early, the season's statistics would suggest that the remaining batting line-up is extremely brittle. McDougall must therefore use his bowlers skilfully and field well. Opportunities presented must be taken. As the well-known cricketing phrase states, 'catches win matches'.

The County bowling attack is not the most fearsome in the Western Premiership One. The team's regular opening bowling partnership of Mubarak Ali and Zeeshan Sami have a total of 14 wickets between them in six matches. And once again there is a reliance on Tweedie and Shahzad with 15 wickets to their credit to support the opening pair.

McDougall has a good squad of players available for Saturday's match. He will hope to win the toss and, if he elects to bat, his first decision will be what pairing to use to open the innings. Whatever the choice, it will be important for them to bat through the first twenty overs and get the innings off to a sound start.

If that can be achieved, then the job of Rahul Dalal, the club pro, coming in at number three or four in the batting order, will be to ensure a total in excess of 250 runs is made by the end of the innings. Dalal is in fine form with three centuries from the last four matches. He has had to work very hard in these recent matches and having a good platform from which to move forward would be a pleasant change for him.

The team is not without others in the side who can score well. Lukas Fischer-Keogh, Tom Polkinghorne and Gregor Chambers have each had some good innings this season. If they can each produce some good batting form on Saturday along with Dalal then a substantial score can be built.

Bowling out Stirling will then be the next task. Only twice this season have the team managed to bowl out their opponents within 50 overs. Both were when the opposition batted first, West of Scotland 149 in 35.4 overs and Ferguslie 238 in 49.3 overs.

In truth they are one pace bowler light this season and depend on Gregor Chambers to spearhead the attack. Who will join him on Saturday is another quandary for Greg McDougall. He does have a number of players whom he will be able to choose from, but if a real pace bowler was available then they would be used later in the innings.

Work patterns of players means that it is unusual for a consistent side to be fielded each week. And so it is on Saturday. Unavailable from last week are Cammy Calder and Shailesh Prabhu but back in to the selected side come Harry Briggs, Tom Forrest and Nagendra Nagaraju with Ewan Stewart dropping down to the Glenpark XI.

Saturday's game against Stirling is a must win match. Victory could propel the side up a few places in the league table but a loss could begin to isolate them at the bottom of the table.

As usual, the match will start at 12 noon.

The Glenpark XI had a most disappointing result last Saturday when they were overwhelmed by The Tryst. This week they are away to Milngavie 2nd XI, a new opponent for them, and will be led by Sudeep Chuadhary as skipper Eddie Ahmad is unavailable. He will be looking to the selected team to redeem themselves this week with a much improved performance. The match will start at 1pm.

The Club is grateful for the continued sponsorship from Cleaning Supplies 4U.