1st XI defeat Mearns for much-needed win

Greenock 1st XI v Mearns
Western Premiership Two
Saturday 27th June 2026

Mearns 93   R Dhar 30
Greenock 1st XI 96 for 2   U Mansoor 37

Greenock 1st XI (25 pts) defeated Mearns (0 pts) by 8 wickets

Scorecard

The 1st XI reached the half way point in the Western Premiership Two league programme with an important victory over Mearns CC at Glenpark on Saturday, a win which moved the local team up to sixth place in the league table.

The afternoon began with stand-in skipper Toby Matthews winning the toss and inserting Mearns. This gave the side an important advantage of control of the match if there were any weather interruptions and a need to involve the Duckworth Lewis Stern (DLS) system in determining the outcome of the game.

Mearns were quickly on the back foot as three early wickets left them on 14 for 3 inside the first four overs. First wicket to fall was Simon Machado bowled by Mahmood Ahmadzai in the second over of the match. Then in over number three, Ketan Sharma was beaten by the pace of Fahim Dinarkhiel and had his stumps knocked back.

One over further on and Ahmadzai collected his second wicket when new batsman Rohitabja Haldar was trapped leg before for just one run.

A partnership of 29 runs between Rajat Dhar and Naman Sangari steadied the visitors' innings for a while. But the bowlers regained their early initiative when Sangari was bowled by Cameron Calder in the sixteenth over. And that wicket was swiftly followed in the next over when Dinarkhiel had Anulome Kishore caught by Greg McDougall at cover.

Mearns' score of 45 for the loss of 5 wickets soon became 58 for 7 as the 1st XI took more and more control of the game. Firstly, Sagar Suman was clean bowled by Cammy Calder and then top scorer Rajat Dhar (30) was removed when Greg McDougall took a second catch at cover, this time from the bowling of Toby Matthews.

The bowlers kept up the pressure on the Mearns tail-end batters and the innings ended in the 34th over when last man Prasad Patnaik was run out with the score on 93.

Fahim Dinarkhiel 2 for 19 from 10 overs, Mahmood Ahmadzai 2 for 16 from 4 overs and Cameron Calder 2 for 22 from 8 overs were the leading wicket-takers.

After the tea interval, the team raced to a deserved and comfortable win inside just 18 overs. Usman Mansoor and Cameron Calder provided a sound start to the run-chase with a carefully compiled 60 runs from the first fourteen overs. The partnership was ended with the winning target just a little more than thirty runs away when Calder was caught off the bowling of Deepak Kumar for 20.

And it was Kumar who also picked up the wicket of Mansoor in the 16th over when the opening batsman was stumped by wicket-keeper Rajat Dhar for an excellent 37 runs.

Only a further twenty runs were needed when Mansoor was dismissed and the team's two Aussie amateurs, Toby Matthews and Adam McGuirk, made short work of scoring the runs to take their team to victory.

McGuirk announced his intentions immediately, by smashing Kumar for a maximum six followed by a boundary from his first two balls at the crease. And it took only twelve balls after Mansoor's departure for the win to be wrapped up as McGuirk, in particular, plundered the Mearns bowling.

He finished the match in style by dispatching the second ball of the eighteenth over to the boundary to loud applause from the team's supporters.

This victory was a most emphatic win for the team with thirty two overs remaining to be bowled and with eight wickets in hand. The win saw the 1st XI move up to sixth place in the league table and created some breathing space from the teams beneath them.