1st XI lose close encounter with Kilmarnock

Greenock 1st XI v Kilmarnock
WDCU Premiership Two
Saturday 3rd August 2024

 Scorecard       

The 1st XI lost to Kilmarnock for a second time this season when the team went down by just nine runs at Glenpark on Saturday afternoon. It was a game which ebbed and flowed throughout. But a poor batting performance, especially from the top order, eventually sunk the side.

The Western Premiership Two is a league in which it seems almost every side can beat each other this season. Only Dumfries at the top seem able to win each week, while Hillhead at the bottom have yet to win a single league match.

The loss to Kilmarnock was a particularly disappointing result and could put paid to the team's hopes of moving up the league table to gain a season ending third place. Just four more fixtures remain and they must win all four if that third top spot is to have any chance of being achieved.

The afternoon began well after Kilmarnock won the toss and chose to bat. With just the fourth ball of the very first over, Connor Nowlan sent Killie's opening bat Ben Rigby's centre stump cartwheeling out of the ground.

However, Adrian Maritz who scored 95 runs against the team earlier in the season, and almost single-handedly won the match for the Ayrshire side at the Scott Ellis Oval, settled his team along with batting partner Paul Flanagan.

They put on 37 runs until Connor Nowlan picked up his, and Kilmarnock's, second wicket when he had Maritz LBW for 23 in the ninth over.

And a third wicket followed just three balls after the dismissal of Maritz when new batsman, South African Dehan Fourie was LBW to Angus Tolhurst.

At 41 for 3, Kilmarnock might have crumbled. But a fine fourth wicket partnership between team captain Flanagan and Vieira Oelofse changed the course of the visitors' innings as they took the score up to and past the one hundred run mark.

Then just as it seemed that the Ayrshire side were set to dominate the afternoon and had their sights set on taking their innings total to over 200, a sudden batting collapse occurred.

With the score on 110 for 3, captain Nowlan made a bowling change. Tolhurst was brought back on for a second spell and it paid immediate dividends when, with his first ball, he had Oelofse brilliantly stumped by wicket-keeper Harry Briggs for 47. And the very next ball new batter Smith was out LBW.

Worse followed for Kilmarnock when Tolhurst repeated his magic with the first two balls of his next over, removing Flanagan caught by Sehmet Pandher for 22, and then Wilson caught first ball by a very sharp catch at second slip by Connor Nowlan.

Adam Hunter became the fifth wicket to fall in the space of just three overs when he chipped a ball from Chirag Pandher to Cammy Calder at cover who took the simplest catch.

110 for 3 had become 112 for 8 and the team were right back in the match.

But Kilmarnock were not ready to fold completely and a ninth wicket stand of twenty runs by Ranjit Singh and Waleed Iqbal thwarted the bowlers for the next eight overs. But then a tremendous, one-handed diving catch at full stretch by Cammy Calder at cover dismissed Singh for 10 and then with just one more run added, Nowlan picked up his fourth wicket of the afternoon by bowling Iqbal for 9 and ended the visitors' innings on 134.

With fifty overs to bat, the team needed to score at just under three runs per over to achieve the win. However, the innings got off to the worst possible start with both opening bats, Nowlan and Shailesh Prabhu, dismissed without a run on the scoreboard.

From these early setbacks the innings mostly stuttered along with Kilmarnock in control and confidence high.

Harry Briggs was returned to the clubhouse with the last ball of the sixth over, having edged a delivery from South African Dehan Fourie to wicketkeeper Flanagan for 9 runs and then with the score on 22 Aryan Sanghera was judged LBW for 4.

A partnership between Tolhurst and Calder seemed to be getting the team back on track and had added 29 runs when Calder was bowled by Fourie for 9. And next ball Fourie picked up his fourth wicket by bowling Sehmet Pandher to leave the score on 51 for 6 and a distance from target required to win the match.

But Tolhurst was still going well and much rested with him and the biggest partnership of the innings with Chirag Pandher gave the team hope. However with the score on 82, Pandher was out for 12 and Kilmarnock were very much into the tail-end batters.

The innings kept going and run-by-run the team got nearer to the Kilmarnock total but when Tolhurst was dismissed having scored a valiant 64 runs, bowled by Iqbal with the score on 113, the game swung fully in Kilmarnock's favour and the Ayrshire men clinched the win when last man Ahmadzai was given out LBW on 124.