Don't say it too loudly but its turning into a cracking start of the season for the Hill, with the 1st XI picking up a win at current Champions Burnmoor, the 2nd XI and 3rd XI NEPL team maintaing their winning run against Sunderland and Tynemouth respectively, only the 3rd XI West Tyne league went down to defeat, on the last ball of the game at Hexham Leazes.
At Burnmoor, the hosts win the toss and batted first, a steady start saw the current NEPL champions reach 100 for 4 , however wickets then began to tumble regularly and they were eventually dismissed for only 120 all out in 44.4 overs. Pete Jones on his return to the 1st's, claimed excellent figures of 4 for 29 off his 10 overs, other wickets were shared between Kyle (2 for 21), Max (2 for 8), Callum and Mohsin (both with 1 for 16).
As is the Hill way, we kept things interesting in our reply, losing two early wickets to fall to 17 for 2 on the tricky wicket, however a 3rd wicket stand of 44 steadied the ship to take us to 61 for 3, before Angus Guy fell for 24, James Schofield then quickly followed to leave us at 63 for 4, however in form skipper Pete Halliday (fresh from his century last week), scored a valuable 33 before he was next man out at 103 for 5, Mohsin then fell to make it 111 for 6, fortunately old heads Nico and Belly were around, and the pair saw us home with 4 wickets and 6 overs to spare. A great win, against tough opponents.
The scorecard is available here https://benwellhill.play-cricket.com/website/results/4603574
At the Hill there was another comprehensive win for the 2nd's as they beat Sunderland by 7 wickets. The Hill won the toss and elected to bowl, and it proved to be an inspired decision as the visitors were skittled for only 92. Wickets were shared with Tom Hastilow taking 3 for 16 off his 10 overs, Anthony Hunter 2 for 14 off 9 overs, Joe Torre 2 for 33 off his 10 overs, and Joe Kilpatrick 1 for 25 off his 9.5 overs.
After reaching 43 for 0, we then lost 3 quick wickets to fall to 48 for 3, but there were no further alarms as reach the visitors score with 30 overs to spare. Joe Moore with 35 and Jo Fletcher with 33 the top scorers.
The scorecard is available here https://benwellhill.play-cricket.com/website/results/4604750
Unfortunately we went down to a narrow 4 wicket defeat in the final over of the game, we won the toss and batted first and set Hexham 217 to win, John Chambers with 61 and Zain Ullah 55 top scoring with the bat, Haroon Malik was the pick of our bowlers with 2 for 33 off 8 overs.
West Tyne 3rd XI scorecard is available here https://benwellhill.play-cricket.com/website/results/4796875
On Sunday the young NEPL 3rd XI continued their 100% start to the season with a comprehensive win over Tynemouth. Tynemouth who won the toss chose to bat, but quickly regretted that decision as they fell to 43 for 5 and then 76 all out. 14 year old youngster Abu Siddique amongst the wickets with 4 for 27, Shay Marley also took 4 wickets his for only 10 runs, 15 year old Owen Blackburn and Joe Fletcher with 1 wicket apiece took the remaining wickets.
We had little trouble chasing down the total, with 16 year old Rohan Aatif continuing his impressive start to the season with 44 not out, 14 year old Freddie McGregor with 13, and Joe Torre with 18 not out, the other contributors as we reach the target for loss of only 1 wicket in the 18th over.
The scorecard is available here https://benwellhill.play-cricket.com/website/results/4694565
