No joy for the 1st XI at Kilmarnock

Kilmarnock v Greenock 1st XI
Western Premiership Two
Saturday 8th August 2026

Greenock 1st XI 109   S Chaudhary 3 for 26
Kilmarnock 110 for 5   

Greenock 1st XI (3 pts) lost to Kilmarnock (25 pts) by 5 wickets

Scorecard

The 1st XI's run of poor results continued on Saturday when the team lost to League leaders Kilmarnock at the Scott Ellis Playing Fields. The result, while disappointing, was perhaps not too unexpected given the team's form this season.

It will be the last three matches of the league programme which will ultimately define the season. All three fixtures involve the team playing against the other three teams who are fighting to avoid relegation.

This coming Saturday, they play bottom side Hillhead at Glenpark, then the final two matches are against Helensburgh and Mearns which are both away from home. A minimum of two wins from the three matches will likely be needed to avoid the drop.

Saturday's trip down into Ayrshire to meet league leaders Kilmarnock, was always going to be a difficult afternoon for the side and so it proved. Put into bat by Kilmarnock who won the toss, their poor batting form once again proving to be the team's downfall.

A new opening partnership of Jamie Nowell and Greg McDougall was sent out to try and get a decent start to the innings. The pair worked hard and produced the best partnership of the afternoon by putting 33 runs on to the scoreboard by the end of the first ten overs of play.

However, early in the eleventh over Nowell was given out LBW for 11. And just five overs later Shailesh Prabhu (5) provided a catch to Adam Wilson from the bowling of Zeeshan Qamar to put the team two wickets down for 42 runs.

The batters were unable make much headway against some tight bowling by the Kilmarnock attack and when the third wicket fell in the 24th over, they had only managed to reach 66. It was slow progress. McDougall was the player out bowled by Zeeshan Qamar for 10.

At the mid-point of the innings with just three wickets down, the team might have hoped to move up a gear and add at least a further 100 runs in the 26 overs which remained. But that proved to be a forlorn hope as wickets continued to be lost with few runs being added.

Adam McGuirk (18) provided a catch to Paul Flanagan off the bowling of Inderjit Singh with the score on 75 and two overs later new batter Chirag Pandher gave Singh his second wicket of the afternoon to leave the team toiling on 79 for 5.

Stand-in captain Toby Matthews and the experienced Rod Mountford looked to be developing a decent sixth wicket partnership with 21 runs added in six overs. But with the scoreboard showing exactly 100 towards the end of the 37th over, Matthews was given out LBW having scored 23 runs.

His dismissal signalled the beginning of the end of the innings as just a further nine runs were added for the loss of the remaining four wickets. The tail-enders lasted only a very little time before the innings ended very disappointingly on 109 in the 42nd over.

After the break, the Killie batsmen made quick work of scoring the runs needed to win the match. With rain around, the league leaders scored at an average of a run a ball to win in the 18th over but having lost five wickets in the process.

Inderjit Singh top scored with 20 runs for Kilmarnock, while for the 1st XI, Muhibullah Ahmadzai picked up 2 wickets and Toby Matthews, Adam McGuirk and Mahmood Ahmadzai collected one wicket each.

The three points gained for having picked up five wickets could prove ultimately to be very important, as the final three matches will determine which two sides survive and which two sides drop down a division.

Just seven percentage points separate the bottom four, with the team's fate firmly in their own hands as they play each of the other three relegation contenders in the run-in to the end of the league season.