A youthful 3rd XI hosted a particularly strong Tynemouth in their second game of the season this week, in a game that reflected perhaps a lack of experience in the home side.
On a day where the toss was an important one, Tynemouth won and decided to bat, and from that moment on they were rarely not on top of the game. Some impressive batting, and poor fielding led to Tynemouth reaching 106-0 before Rohaan Aatif took his first wicket for us this season. This was all to cheer about for a large portion of the innings as Tynemouth continued to build from their strong start, and other than Abu Siddique's 3/55 (8), the bowlers, along with some poor fielding, largely struggled to contain the Tynemouth batting attack as they reached 251-4 off their 40 overs.
A disheartened Hill side could not answer with the bat, with only 3 players making it past 20 in response, we slumped to a poor 144 all out. There was some highlights in there;13 year-old Rory Mustard batted beautifully for his 23, and there was some impressive power hitting late on from MD Salim (43), to lower the margin of defeat. All in all a learning curve for the side that featured 9 juniors, and they will look to bounce back against Newcastle next week.
The scorecard is available here https://benwellhill.play-cricket.com/website/results/5134476
