Marsa lose touch against Fiddlers
The fixtures' list at the Marsa Sports Club had to be re-arranged last week following the last-minute retirement from the tour of Adastrian CC. A three-match series was instead agreed upon with other visiting side Fiddlers CC. The first match was...
The fixtures' list at the Marsa Sports Club had to be re-arranged last week following the last-minute retirement from the tour of Adastrian CC. A three-match series was instead agreed upon with other visiting side Fiddlers CC. The first match was played on Saturday with the other games scheduled for today and next Saturday.
The Fiddlers won the toss and elected to bat. Marsa struck in the second over with a fine catch by Michael Caruana off Sam Dhandapani's bowling. In the next over Alan Swift bowled Chris North as the visitors were two wickets down for seven runs by the third over, an excellent start one would imagine.
But, the next wicket fell in the 26th over with opening batsman Pete Langford being caught in the deep by John Farrugia.
Langford supported Simon Jessup who took it up to the Marsa bowling, hitting 18 fours and one straight six on the way to a superb 127 before he, too, was caught out in the deep, this time by Ronnie Sacco.
Jessup played some remarkable straight drives and well-timed cut shots. His wicket had the visitors at 192 runs. With the remaining ten overs they could only add another 53 with Elroy Hull making 27 not out in the final total of 245 runs for the loss of seven wickets.
Caruana was Marsa's best bowler with three wickets.
Marsa were facing a tall order but after last week's batting performance against Sileby Town, they were confident of reaching their objective.
The opening pair of Robert Krishna and Sarfraz Ali had the innings off to a flying start, making 21 and 26 respectively. Dhandapani then made 18 runs before being caught by Jessup.
Wickets fell before Glen Tavilla came to the crease having set a record last week by smashing Sileby bowler M. Walker for six 4s in an over.
This time, however, he lost touch and was stumped off Mike Salmon's bowling for two runs which left the locals at 82 for the loss of six wickets.
Caruana was next in hitting six 4s in his tally of 34 before being caught and only Swift was able to make 14 runs not out in the total of 164.
For the visitors Salmon was the better bowler taking four wickets. Marsa lost by 81 runs.