1st XI doomed to relegation as weather intervenes

Greenock 1st XI v Stenhousemuir
WDCU Premiership One
Saturday 12th August 2023

 Scorecard       

The 1st XI's hopes of survival in the WDCU Premiership One league suffered a double blow on Saturday. Their match against Stenhousemuir at Glenpark was an opportunity to gain a win and 25 valuable points but wet weather plagued the day and after a series of stop starts it was eventually abandoned.

Meanwhile third bottom Stirling County, the team which the 1st XI were looking to overhaul to keep their Premiership place, managed to finish their match at Prestwick and won.

So with just two more rounds of matches remaining in the league programme, the team is set to return to playing in the Premiership Two next season.

Winning the last two matches against Stirling County and Uddingston will now still not be enough as County's win at Prestwick means that even if the Stirlingshire side lose their last two matches and gain zero points, they cannot be overtaken.

On Saturday afternoon, skipper Greg McDougall won the toss and elected to bat first. But the match only got under way at 2pm some two hours after the normal 12 noon starting time due to a rain delay.

Delays rarely work to the advantage of the batting side and so it was on Saturday as both opening batsmen were back in the clubhouse after just nine balls had been bowled.

A fairly quickfire partnership between Chris Hempsey and Rahul Dalal added 40 runs before Hempsey (12) was caught by Vaughan Davies on the Fox Street boundary from the bowling of Nick Lister.

Gregor Chambers and Dalal then had a 34 run partnership before Dalal was LBW to Vaughan Davies for 49 leaving the score at 83 for 4 in just the 13th over.

Chambers and Nikhil Kadyan added 31 runs from the next twelve overs before Kadyan was bowled by Calum Grant for 12 runs.

Rain interruptions to the match by this point had reduced the innings to one of just 35 overs instead of the usual 50 overs.

So with ten overs to play the team were 114 for the loss of 5 wickets and looking to post a total in excess of 150.

That did not happen. Instead the side lost their lst five wickets for just five runs to set Stenhousemuir a target of 120 to win.

But with just eight balls bowled in the visitors' innings and after a lengthy delay due to further heavy rain, the match was abandoned with Stenhousemuir on 10 runs without loss.