All three senior teams enjoyed success this weekend in what will hopefully be a pivotal weekend in the season.
1st XI report from Pete Halliday - The Hill visited Jesmond in a tie which surprisingly held importance at the bottom end of the league, with our opponents sitting directly below us at the foot of the table.
Despite both sides missing players due to commitments with Durham, the Hill were pleased to finally hand Finn McCreath his debut.
The hosts won the toss and elected to bowl. This decision looked the correct one with the Hill at 37-2. However a fantastic partnership of 126 between Adam Heather (64) and Kyle Coetzer (136*) swung the game back in the away sides favour. Further partnerships developed and some strong hitting late in the innings produced a highly competitive 276-8 declared from 56 overs.
Another two individual club best scores for Adam and Kyle, and more importantly, two more rounds of beers for the team to look forward to!
In response, Newcastle struggled to handle the pace and variation within the Hill attack and lost wickets at regular intervals. The final ball of Callum Harding’s (3-30) 12th over finishing the home sides innings at 101. Another club best performance was the highlight, with Luke Mussett returning figures of 6-19 from 11 overs.
Time to start looking up the table!
The 2nd XI had a 90 run win over Newcastle, Joe Fletcher with 44 and Joe Kilpatrick with 4 for 13 the star performers.
The West Tyne 3rd XI had a hard fought 3 wicket win over Newton, thanks largely to Aqeel Tassawar with 4 for 22 and Jeff Mason with 53 and Harry Reeves with 32.
West Tyne 3rd XI scorecard v Newton
Unfortunately the winning run came to end on Sunday, as the NEPL 3rd XI went down to their first defeat of the season at Tynemouth. A young Hill side containing 9 junior players ranging from 13 to 19, plus the ever dependable Chris Pounder and skipper Andy Jewitt restricted Tynemouth to 149 all out, with Chris Pounder returning season best figures of 4 for 24, Joe Torre also taking 4 wickets for 23, and young Mathew Lockey in his first senior game of the season taking 2 for 21 from 7.4 overs.
We didn't perform so well in the chase, falling an agonising 17 runs short, despite an excellent 47 from in form Harry Reeves, and 26 from Zain Ahmed.
