Weekend Sport – Sat 4th August. Cricket 1st XI v Carlton

At Inverleith – Carlton  245 for seven (50 overs);   Stewart’s Melville CC    72 all out (26.2 overs)

Notwithstanding our earlier league win against Carlton Saturday’s match ended with another comprehensive defeat for the 1st XI.    Adam McHoul stood in as captain for the unavailable Greg Ruthven and Steven Parker.   With Kyle McCallum ruled out with a calf injury our batting was thus somewhat depleted and this was reflected in our score.

Whatever the outcome of matches our captains have had remarkable success in winning the toss and on doing so again Adam elected to bowl first on a pretty green pitch.   Shaylen Pillay and Tom Hilton once again caused the early opposition batsmen some issues restricting Carlton to 37 for 2 from 12 overs before being replaced by Chris Bissett and Adam McHoul and then Sam Tait who bowled the next seventeen overs as Carlton took the score onto 106 for the loss of one further wicket.   With a platform established Carlton added another 139 runs in the remaining 21 overs with Rory McCann the Merchiston school coach and a former Irish internationalist finishing on 90 and Arun Pillai finishing on 72.

Hayden Sweet and Greg Bissett opened our batting against Scotland World Cup bowler Alastair Evans and Omar Ahmad before Hayden was run out in the tenth over with the score at 17.   No one played an innings of any substance thereafter as the next eight wickets fell in only nine overs with the score just 46.   Our last two bats Zaki Thompson and Tom Hilton then held out for a further 30 minutes adding 26 runs in the highest partnership of the innings.   Thoughts now turn to next weekend’s crucial match against bottom of the league Glenrothes when a much better performance is hoped for.  A win then would secure the club’s place in the top division for another season.