Comfortable win for the 1st XI over Accies

 Scorecard       

The 1st XI gained a comfortable 8 wicket win over Glasgow Accies at Glenpark on Saturday. The team had gone into the match as favourites and the result clearly showed that prediction to be justified.

The side have now won two out of the three Western Premiership Two matches played so far this season and occupy the third top spot in the league table behind Dumfries and Kelburne.

Accies won the toss and chose to bat. A decent start was made by openers Zia and Brown with 33 runs added for the first wicket, mostly contributed by Zia who was in an attacking mood and keen to score boundaries whenever an opportunity was presented.

The partnership was broken in the seventh over when Connor Nowlan had Brown caught by wicketkeeper Harry Briggs for just five runs. It was to be the biggest partnership of the afternoon for the Glasgow side which was disappointing for them after a promising start.

Just two overs later and Nowlan was once again the wicket-taker and this time he removed the dangerous Zia in similar fashion to Brown caught behind the wicket by Briggs for 27 runs.

The introduction of slow, left arm bowler Angus Tolhurst in the eleventh over soon led to some further Accies wickets tumbling.

Satpute was trapped LBW with the last ball of the thirteenth over and Holloway caught by Inam Khan with the last ball of the fifteenth over as Tolhurst dominated the Accies middle order batsmen.

A third wicket for Tolhurst came in the seventeenth over when Nicholas was bowled for 9 runs with the score on 54 for 5 wickets and Accies in some bother.

Then a partnership of 29 runs gave Accies some hope of being able to build a decent total before Tolhurst collected his fourth wicket when he bowled Shah for 13 runs in the 29th over.

One wicket often brings another very quickly and so it was when Safi was caught by Nowlan for 13 runs from the bowling of captain Greg McDougall to leave Accies on 83 for 7.

The last three wickets produced a further 33 runs to take the Glasgow side to 116 all out at the tea interval.

Angus Tolhurst once again produced outstanding bowling statistics. The young Australian bowled 10 overs, 5 of which were maidens, and took 4 wickets for just 8 runs. Opening bowler Connor Nowlan had 3 for 31 from his 10 overs while Sam Sanghera, Usman Mansoor and Greg McDougall each took one wicket.

To win the match the team only required to score at just a little more than two runs per over if they batted all the way through the 50 overs available. That was not necessary as the runs were rattled up in just less than 33 overs.

However, the side did suffer an early setback when opener Shailesh Prabhu was given out LBW with the first ball of the third over of the innings.

A sound second wicket partnership between Connor Nowlan and Harry Briggs recovered the early loss with Nowlan, in particular, in fine run-scoring form.

After ten overs the Greenock score had moved along to 30 for 1 with the two batsmen dealing sensibly with the opening Accies bowling attack.

By the end of the end of the twentieth over the home score had more than doubled to 77 runs as Nowlan and Briggs steadily accumulated their runs.

But the partnership was broken midway through the twenty first over when Briggs was stumped by wicket-keeper Holloway off the bowling of Satpute for 20.

Angus Tolhurst joined Nowlan and the two young Aussie amateurs added forty more runs without any alarms to take the team to a very comfortable win in the 33rd over.

Nowlan was not out 68 with 10 boundaries in his innings while Tolhurst was unbeaten on 21 from twenty five deliveries.

The win moved the 1st XI into third top spot, and at this early stage in the league programme the teams who prior to the start of the season were fancied for promotion to the top league are occupying the top four positions.