After what seemed an eternity, Saturday cricket eventually returned on 3rd August, but it was all too brief for an under strength 1st XI as they fell to a heavy defeat at Hetton Lyons. A very youthful 2nd XI kept their strong league form going with a comfortable win over Boldon, but the 3rd XI fell to a suprising dfefeat to Belsay.
An under strength 1st team missing Kyle Coetzer (T20 in Canada), Will Smth (holiday) and Luke Doneathy (on England U19 duty) were inserted into bat against Hetton Lyons, and it seemed a good decision as we quickly slipped to 53-5, eventually posting 95 all out of 39 overs, with only 4 batsmen making double figures, Rory Hanley (18), Pete Halliday (15), William Archbold (15) and James Schofield (11).
A couple of early missed chances in the field proved costly with such a small total, and Hetton Lyons successfully chased the toal down for loss of 3 wickets in 20 overs, a wicket each for Callum, Luke M and Max.
1st XI scorecard v Hetton Lyons
The 2nd's entertained Boldon at the Hill, and recorded a comfortable 69 run win. The Hill batted first scoring 241 for 6, largely due to an excellent 91 from 17 year old Joe Fletcher, and 64 rom 16 year old Rohan Aatif. Boldon were all out for 172, Joe Kilpatrick, Aqeel Tassawar and Joe Torre sharing 2 wickets each, and first ever 2nd XI wickets for youngsters Haroon Malik and Matthew Lockey.
A much weakend 3rd XI went down to defeat against Belsay. Things looks promising at half way as we bowled out the hosts for 123, 2 wickets each for Zain Ullah, Nat Jansen and Chris Pounder, and 1 each for far east bound Shaun Rushton, Ross Marley and Bilal Yousef. However depsite a promising opening partnership between Rashid Shad (31) and Assanka Jayaweera (15), we stumbled to 97 all out, with Chris Pounder (19) the only other man to make double figures.
The NEPL 3rd XI fixture on Sunday 4th August did not go ahead and has been re-arranged for back end of the season.
