CRICKET — Greenock Face West Of Scotland At Glenpark

GREENOCK face West of Scotland at Glenpark on Saturday aiming to build on last week’s vital win over Ayr.

That victory lifted Greenock two places up the Premier Division table to eighth place. However, they are still firmly in the relegation battle and cannot rest on their laurels.

The win over Ayr was a real team effort, led from the front by skipper Neil Flack, whose 56 and 3 for 24 were the top efforts of the day. But everyone chipped in with wickets, some good catches were taken and the middle and lower order came good at the end of the game when it looked as if Greenock might be throwing away their hard-fought advantage.

West of Scotland have had a mixed season so far. After a promising start which included a comfortable victory over Greenock at Hamilton Crescent, they have lost their way a bit in recent weeks and have slipped to seventh place in the table. Last Saturday’s game at Hamilton Crescent against Dumfries was abandoned because of a dangerous pitch and there was a possibility that West might be docked 25 points but it appears that is not going to happen.

Nonetheless, they will be aware that they have slipped close to the relegation area and will be keen to put some distance between themselves and the three clubs at the foot of the table. West field a well-balanced team with runs coming from Fennah, Young, Hearn, Watson and overseas amateur Boller while their attack is led by Smith and McNulty, who can be quite a formidable opening pair, backed up by Fennah and Farndale. Professional Trevor Garwe, from Zimbabwe, has yet to really catch fire but obviously has the potential to do so with both bat and ball.

Although it might be thought that the current hot and dry spell would produce batsman-friendly pitches, this has proved not to be the case throughout the west of Scotland as witnessed by last weekend’s scores. Substantial assistance has been afforded to spin bowlers by the dry and dusty pitches and these conditions may well prevail again this weekend. If this turns out to be the case, then Greenock will trust that their spinners, Flack and Laurens Smit, outperform Fennah and Farndale from West.

While runs are expected from Greenock’s top order batsmen, the lower order have a key job to do as well and this was demonstrated to good effect last week by Greg McDougall whose partnership with Laurens Smit was instrumental in overtaking Ayr’s total. Likewise, it was good to see the wickets spread throughout the bowling attack and mention should be made of young Sean Fischer-Keogh who bowled a fine six-over spell and captured his first senior league wicket.

There are two changes to the side that played Ayr with Tom Forrest and Sehmat Pandher replacing the unavailable Sean Fischer-Keogh and Sam Sanghera. The full team is: ND Flack (capt), S Bandekar, HR Briggs, TD Forrest, J Griffiths, JPC Hempsey, GJ McDougall, RP Mountford, SS Pandher, ML Smit, E Stewart.  The match will start at noon.

Greenock’s 2nd XI – the Glenpark XI – travel to Larbert to play The Tryst, Stenhousemuir’s reserve side, on Saturday. The first encounter of the season between these teams resulted in a narrow win for Glenpark by just 17 runs and skipper Ally Calder will hope that the winning margin this time is a bit wider.

Last week against Marress, Glenpark scored an imposing 324 in winning by 103 runs with runs spread throughout the team, backed up by an incredible 88 extras. Several of the younger players of the team were also involved in Sunday’s one-run win over Renfrew and it was good to see them making positive contributions in both games and gaining valuable match experience.

The team to play The Tryst is: AS Calder (capt), CS Calder, A Caskie, P Caskie, S Chaudhary, M Farrell, L McCahill, J Nowell, CS Pandher, DC Sharma, N Stanton.

Greenock Cricket Club is sponsored by Cleaning Supplies 4U