Bad weather once again affected the Saturday fixtures, with the 1st and 2nd XI's losing there 7th Satuday games to the weather. For both teams it was the third Saturday fixture in a row lost to the weather.
In total the 1st XI have had 3 Saturday games called off without a ball being bowled, Sacriston away this weekend, Burnopfield at home on 8 June and Felling away on 18 May being the other games. There has been 4 other games where rain prevented the finish of the game, they were Eppleton at home on 20 July (only 6.5 overs possible), Chester le Street away on 13 July (only 21 overs possible), Tynemouth away on 15 June when we only needed 3 wickets to win, and Hetton Lyons at home on 25 May (only 47 overs were possible). Add to that 3 out of 5 Friday night NEPL T20 games called off for rain, it really has turned into a damp squid for fixtures scheduled on a Friday and Saturday.
Amazingly, once again the skies cleared later on Saturday and overnight, and Baz's young guns (plus Chris Pounder and Fenwick Friskin) game went ahead on the Sunday afternoon. It was a low scoring affair at South Shields on a challenging wicket, but we just came out on top to win by 21 runs. We batted first and posted 93 all out of 31.4 overs, this was largely indebited to another great knock from young Rohan Aatif who scored 35 and Fenwick Friskin's 20, they were the only two batters to hit double figures, extras the next best at 16. Wickets fell regularly in Shields reply, as they tumbled to 10 for 3, 14 for 4, 30 for 7, and eventually being bowled out for 72. Wickets were shared with opening bowlers Joe Fletcher (3 for 13, Joe Anderson (2 for 11), getting things started, Andy Jewitt (2 for 9), Chris Pounder (2 for 8) and Matthew Lockey (1 for 6) doing the damage in the middle and late order. The team remain top of the Sunday League Division 1 by 45 points with 5 games to go.
