MALAHIDE VICTORIOUS AS ADAMSTOWN MAKE THEIR ALAN MURRAY CUP DEBUT

As they made their debut in the LHK Group Alan Murray T20 competition, an historic night for Adamstown Cricket Club saw them come up against a determined Malahide side and bad weather.

Playing on the large expanse of the international ground at Malahide, the visitors won the toss and were confident enough to put the home team in to bat. The opening overs were tight, with Adam Doyle departing bowled in the first over. He was followed by Callum Riches in the fourth, at which point the home team wrestled control of the innings.

Ryan Hackney and Fintan McAllister knuckled down and put on 72 before Fintan was unluckily bowled off the back of his bat. Aaron Doyle joined Ryan and they set about the Adamstown bowling attack, with a partnership of 64 to bring Malahide to a par score 164 in their 20 overs.

The Adamstown bowling was spread between six players, with Pomin Ponselvan taking 1/26, Chandra Mouleeswaran Venkataraman taking 1/23 and Avish Rathour 2/21 from his three overs. Deepak Vijayan returned a creditable 0/30 off his full compliment of 4 overs.

At the interval Adamstown might have fancied their chances at chasing that total but as well as facing the Malahide bowlers they also had to contend with the weather. For most of the evening the rain was close and it was obvious that it would be a matter of time before the deluge arrived. Would we get to the five overs needed for a result? And would Adamstown be able to score enough runs to beat the DLS par score?

Understandably the Adamstown team went out with a mindset of scoring as many runs as possible, preferably through big hits and boundaries. Hamid Ali started promisingly with three boundaries in his 14 before he was bowled by Mike Frost.

David O'Halloran had opened from the other end and his aggresive speed and length was a challenge. But it was a stunning bit of fielding by him that put the skids on the Adamstown chase. As Rohit Gulati sought a quick single to cover, O'Halloran pivotted in his follow through to pick up and hit the wicket directly to leave Rohit well short. That left Adamstown 17/2 at the end of the third over.

The fourth over was dramatic, as the impending rain forced both teams to look for the breakthrough. First ball saw a good catch by Hackney to dismiss Fernandes. This was followed by two fours by Yellur and then a dot. In attempting another boundary Yellur could only loft the ball to Kumar. When Tariq was LBW first ball Adamstown were 25/5 and well behind the DLS rate.

Ravi Kumar bowled the next over and despite their attempts Adamstown couldn't get enough bat on ball. Two runs from that over, another two from Frost's next over and one from Kumar's second over saw Adamstown to 30/5, with the rain now falling consistently.

As was always likely to be the case the suspension of play was terminal to the match and Malahide came out victors by 46 runs on DLS. Bowling kudos for Malahide goes to Mike Frost with 4/16 from his three overs.

In all this was a successful, if not victorious, introduction to the LHK Group Alan Murray Cup for Adamstown and they will no doubt have lots of lessons learned for their next two matches in this competition.

LHK GROUP ALAN MURRAY T20 CUP

At Malahide
Malahide 164/4, 20 overs (R Hackney 72*, A Doyle 32*; A Rathour 2/21
beat
Adamstown 30/5, 6.5 overs (H Ali 14; M Frost 4/16)
by 47 runs DLS

At Park Avenue
Railway Union 106/10, 17.2 overs (K Carroll 36; R Cronje 5/26)
lost to
Clontarf 74/2, 10 overs (F Hand 22*; A Matthew 2/25)
by 26 runs DLS

At Terenure
Terenure 147/9, 20 overs (S Nair 47, D Ranolia 3/32, O Hald 2/22, W Bennett 2/30)
lost to
Phoenix 59/3, 6 overs (T Kane 33)
by 11 runs DLS

At Kenure
Rush 201/7, 20 overs (L Johnson 103; P Mehta 2/28, G Hoey 2/31, P Sharma 2/34)
beat
Pembroke 50/1, 5.5 overs (D Tucker 25*, T Lawson 20*; A Neary 1/5)
by 8 runs DLS

Abandoned:

North Kildare vs The Hills

YMCA (159/5 off 20 overs) vs Leinster (8/0 off 1.2 overs)

Merrion (88/3 off 10.3 overs) vs North County

Civil Service (148/10 off 20 overs) vs Balbriggan (26/3 off 3 overs)