On what was possibly the warmest day of the summer so far, we headed over to play our old friends Belhaven in Dunbar. Due to COVID, it has been a long time since I been over there and with the sun blazing down, there are few finer places to be on the East Lothian coast! With rain having meant we did not play our scheduled matches against Dollar and Fettes, it was a welcome chance to play in the sunshine, having suffered all the seasons over at Merchiston on Sunday. We played some good cricket there against strong opposition and picking up two wins against Watsonians CC and Merchiston set us up nicely for what is always a keenly contested fixture against Belhaven!
We lost the toss and were put in to bat and I made a few changes to the order to allow one or two others the opportunity to bat.......and we were pretty quickly 12-3 which included two run outs. Not the ideal start! To be fair, their very tall opening bowler bowled fast and straight and that did for Chay, but Thomas and Ewan were both needlessly run out so it was time to rebuild. Cody and James put on 48 in just over 4 overs which really got the innings going before Cody was carelessly run out for 17. This brought in Charles and he played his best knock of the season with a terrific 47no, narrowly missing out on his 50 but playing some wonderful cricket shots all round the ground, but one sublime cover drive off their very tall quick bowler was the stand out shot as it raced to the boundary with not a fielder moving. The skipper played nicely for 37 before being bowled between bat and pad, Leo struck the ball well for 11 and Charle came in at the end to help Charles get us over 150 which had been our target at the start. We ended on 153-7 in our 20 overs which was an excellent score after a poor start too the innings and showed just what can be achieved if batsmen take their time, are patient, play each ball on its merit and make sure they put the bad ball away. It would take some getting given the strength of our bowling attack, and so it proved.
Belhaven quickly subsided to 17-7 in the face of an excellent opening spell by Xander and Alexander who both picked up three wickets each. Both bowled straight (always important), but Xander swinging deliveries made even their best batters struggle and the game was done after their 8 overs. Some big hitting late on gave some respectability to the scoreline, but we bowled them out for 67 giving us a convincing win. I was delighted by some excellent fielding, including a great catch and run out by Milo in the covers but everyone contributed to what was an excellent team performance.
Camp next week, then our final two matches when you return from the Lake District. Have fun - wish I was going too......!
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