1st XI well beaten by league leaders Kelburne

Kelburne v Greenock 1st XI
WDCU Premiership Two
Saturday 15th June 2024

DLS Par score was 111 in 28 overs

 Scorecard       

The 1st XI slumped to a third consecutive Western Premiership Two league defeat when they lost to league leaders Kelburne in Paisley on Saturday afternoon.

It was also the second match in a row where they had their match decided by the Duckworth Lewis Stern (DLS) system as heavy rain brought a premature end to the game. However, the side were well behind the required run-rate and Kelburne were very much on top.

The afternoon had begun quite positively. Captain Greg McDougall won the pre-match toss of the coin and elected to insert Kelburne and after seven overs had been bowled, their opponents had scored just nine runs and lost one wicket.

The wicket came with the very last ball of the seventh over when Kelburne opening bat Alex Gilmour was caught by wicketkeeper Harry Briggs from the bowling of Connor Nowlan. He had scored just 2 runs from 26 balls when he was removed.

Two overs later Nowlan struck again when he dismissed Gavin Arbuckle leg before wicket (LBW) for 6 runs with the score on 12 and with the bowlers completely dominating.

However, the wicket of Arbuckle brought together Zain Mohammad and Sheldon Van Wyk who slowly began to bring Kelburne back into the game.

The pair put on 38 runs from the next 13 overs before Mohammad was run out for 9 thanks to a smart piece of fielding by Connor Nowlan.

And if the partnership between Mohammad and Van Wyk had brought Kelburne back into the game, then the fourth wicket stand between Van Wyk and Lucas Farndale swung the match more in Kelburne's favour as they put on 72 runs and took the home score to 122 before Van Wyk was out for 43.

The young South African amateur was approaching his fourth half century of the league season when he was run out by another piece of good fielding, this time by Ewan Stewart.

The wicket of Van Wyk came off the last ball of the 38th over. It left Kelburne with 12 overs remaining and with six wickets in hand to enable a high scoring finish to their innings.

But that did not happen. Instead, the attack quickly captured a fifth wicket when new batsman Juan Steyn (1) was bowled by Greg McDougall with the first ball of his second spell of bowling - an astute piece of captaincy by McDougall !

And the last ten overs of the Paisley side's innings yielded just 31 runs as the bowlers finished strongly taking a further 4 wickets as Kelburne were restricted to 159 for 9 at the end of their 50 overs.

Lucas Farndale top scored for Kelburne with 47, while Connor Nowlan with 3 wickets for 20 runs and Ewan Stewart with 2 for 26 were the main wicket-takers.

Needing just slightly more than 3 runs per over from their innings, the team were in a good position at the tea break.

they began their run chase quite positively and midway through the seventh over had reached 25 without loss. But that position quickly changed. In the space of just three overs, Greenock lost four wickets for the addition of two runs and were in deep trouble.

Angus Tolhurst and Sam Sanghera tried hard to steady the innings but runs were difficult to come by and just fourteen runs got added between the tenth and eighteenth overs before Sanghera was removed, caught off the bowling of former Greenock player Dougie Wylie with the score on 41.

The team fell further and further behind the required run-rate as Tolhurst and his new batting partner Ewan Stewart continued to find difficulty in scoring runs from the Kelburne bowling.

With dark clouds building up ominously in the sky overhead and rain beginning to fall, they lost a sixth wicket with the first ball of the 29th over when Stewart (10) was run out attempting a third run off the bowling of Wylie.

As the rain fell heavily, the covers were brought on and play was halted with the score on 54 for the loss of 6 wickets. Continuous heavy rain quickly made the ground unplayable and the match was abandoned by the umpires, leaving Kelburne victors as their opponents were well behind the required DLS score necessary at that point in the match.

Angus Tolhurst was unbeaten on 12 while Juan Steyn 2 wickets for 13 runs and Ahmed-Raza Hanif 2 for 4 were tops for Kelburne when the game was halted.