Gillard and Ali guide Marsa too victory

The league will be of twenty over games, winning teams will earn twelve points , and in the event of a tie points will be split. Bonus points will also be awarded depending on how many runs a team makes and on how many wickets are taken.  The local rule of batsman retiring after facing thirty balls will be applied ( returning if all other batsman are out).

The Marauders C.C won the toss against the Marsa C.C and decided to bat first. Simon Lavendar had them of to a flyer hitting twenty runs from fourteen balls before being caught at deep mid wicket. He hit four boundaries along the way. Clyde Roussouw made a plucky seventeen runs before getting caught. After such a great start , a batting slump took place with Paul B radley, Garret Kempff, AJ Thompson and Sean Byrne making twelve runs between them. Mike Caruana chipped in with fourteen valuable runs, While Tom Atkins (seven runs not out) and Owen Jones (five runs not out) saw out the remaining overs.To help their cause there were eighteen extras which took the total to 93 for the Marauders. For Marsa Matthew Gillard was the pick of the bowlers taking three wickets. Ramadeep Singh, Ravi Sharma, Bikram Arora and Chris Naudi all took a wicket each.

The question was how long will it take Marsa to make the runs. They were not banking on great bowling from Jayden Roussouw who bowled five overs  taking one wicket for thirteen runs. At the other  end Sean Byrne was creating havoc with his five overs taking two wickets for twenty runs. In these first ten overs the Marauders were definitely on top and was capped off with a great fielding effort from Simon Lavendar who swooped on a ball and threw down the stumps from twenty meters away which had John Grima (seventeen runs, three boundaries) run out.  The second half of the innings belonged to the Marsa team with Derek Ali making twenty four runs which included two fours and a six which were all in one over which changed the shape of the game drastically. Andy Naudi played an unusual innings only hitting one four on the way to twenty seven and retiring. His retirement came with only a run two win. Ravi Sharma (ten not out) facing hit the winning runs with a boundary. The Marauders played well enough to keep the Marsa team till the nineteenth over for victory. The victory earned the Marsa team thirteen points while Marauders earned one point.

Next Saturday a friendly game will be played starting at 10:30am.