This weekend saw all four of our men's teams in action in a series of close, entertaining matches. Despite some of the results not going our way, it was an enjoyable bank holiday weekend of cricket for all!
First up on Saturday, our 1st team took on YMCA at Claremont Road and for the third time in three matches, County batted first. However, openers Niall McGovern (1) and John Mooney (16) were dismissed inside the powerplay, and the score was 26-2 after the opening six overs. Captain Eddie Richardson joined Salman Aziz at the crease and set about rebuilding the innings. The pair shared a partnership of 59 before Aziz was out, caught and bowled by Rory Anders. Jonathan Andrews came in and scored 13 off as many balls before he and Richardson were dismissed in quick succession. Dhram Singh provided a cameo at the end of the innings, scoring 10 runs off just four balls, including a boundary and a maximum, to help post a competitive score of 117-6. YMCA openers Mitchell Thompson and Jack Tector got the chase off to a strong start and scored 54 runs for the first wicket. Anthony Mooney got the breakthrough in the tenth over, dismissing Tector and Thompson followed soon after, caught behind by Luke Whelan off the bowling of Sean Sludds. Tim Tector and Rory Anders then put on 43 runs in a little over four overs for the third wicket, leaving the score at 102-2 after 15 overs. Manmeet Singh claimed two wickets in three balls, but the damage had already been done. Tim Tector guided his side to a five wicket win in the penultimate over and finished 43 not out. Our 1st team are back in action this Saturday, with a home fixture against Malahide.
Saturday afternoon also saw our 3rd team play against Knockharley in the YMCA Salver. The visitors batted first but their innings got off to an awful start, with their first three batsman dismissed without scoring, leaving them 2-3. Yuvraj Goud (17) and Aamer Nisar (10) contributed down the order, but County bowled with good discipline and picked up wickets regularly. Sandeep Sood, Zia Mohyuddin and Daniel Mooney all picked up two wickets and both Ben McBride and Asad Ali claimed a wicket each as Knockharley socred 61-8 off their 20 overs. The second innings got off to a poor start as Zia Mohyuddin was out early for a duck. This brought Ben McBride to the crease to partner Rob O'Byrne. However, McBride was run out for 9, before O'Byrne was bowled by Rajesh Adi for 17, leaving the hosts on 34-3. Paras Goel then joined skipper Irfan Arshad, and the pair put the Knockharley bowling attack to the sword. Goel was the main aggressor, scoring four boundaries in his 25 not out, with Arshad contributing with an unbeaten 9. County chased down the score inside 13 overs for the loss of just three wickets.
On Sunday, our 2nd team travelled to Malahide in the Tillain Cup. Malahide batted first and got off to a strong start. Ankit Gugale bowled Adam Doyle for 15, but the hosts batted themselves into an excellent position to and reached 63-1. However, Anthony Mooney played a crucial role in breaking the partnership yet again and he had captain Nick Turner stumped by Luke Whelan. Mooney and Pritish Onmalwar proceeded to run through the middle order, picking up three wickets apiece as Malahide lost six wickets for 24 runs. Keith Reynolds and Phillip McCormack contributed with vital runs down the order, before Abdul Ghaffar took the final two wickets in the last over to bowl Malahide out for 106. Despite the early loss of John Devane, Ciaran Sheridan and Manmeet Singh go the County innings off to a solid start. Yet, when the latter was caught by Matthew Jeffrey-Carrick off the bowling of Neil Boyne, a flurry of wickets followed. Malahide took wickets at regular intervals and County slipped to 63-7, before eventually being bowled out for 85 to lose by 21 runs.
After having no fixture last weekend, there was a double header for our 4th team this week. First up was a local derby against Balbriggan on Sunday at Inch. Bowling first, County made early inroads, dismissing both openers to leave the visitors 18-2. The home side continued to take wickets and Srijan Yerramsetti and Umair Bombay picked up two each to leave Balbriggan 45-6. However, a fantastic innings of 49 from Farhan Raja, which included five 4s and two 6s brought the visitors right back into the game. At 108-6, the game took another twist as opening bowler Paddy Mann returned to claim three quick wickets, and Balbriggan slipped to 110 all out. Mann finished with figures of 4-6 off his three overs. County made a fast start to their innings and reached 22-0 before both openers, Srijan Yerramsetti and Ryan Graham were dismissed in quick succession. Dylan Guildea ran through the middle order, claiming 3-25 from four overs, to put Balbriggan in control of the match. But there was another twist as Venu Reddy Bijjam, coming in at number seven, looked to try and guide the side home. Despite valuable contributions from Umair Bombay and Evan Mehta, wickets continued to fall and in the final over Venu was the last man out, bowled by Mohammad Zaman for 24, and County fell short by six runs.
The 4th team was back in action again on Monday with a trip to Leinster. Openers Avtar Singh and Tom Halliday got the hosts off to a bright start, with Singh scoring a quick 27 off just 21 balls. Halliday and Suyash Vaidya continued to motor on and made quick runs, before both were dismissed by the impressive Srijan Yerramsetti. The young seam bowler proceeded to claim two more scalps and finished with figures of 4-19. Those wickets helped to stem the flow of runs and despite a late cameo of 26 runs from 20 balls by Jazib Javed, County did well to restrict Leinster to a score of 131-6 off 20 overs. Ryan Graham was dismissed with the first ball of the innings and Manan Rafique followed soon after to get the run chase off to a nightmare start. Zia Mohyuddin socred 19 off 20 balls and Stephen Mooney smashed a quickfire 24 to help rebuild the innings, but again both men departed within a few balls of each other. Venu Reddy Bijjam provided resistance with bat late on scoring 21, but a Muhammad Mohsin brace and a couple of run outs meant County would fall short of their target by 25 runs.