Early Season Cricket Festival at Merchiston

Beat Sedbergh and Merchiston

Lost to Belhaven

This early season friendly festival was born about 9 years ago, but due to the vagaries of the Scottish and Cumbrian early Spring weather, it has only been played about 4 times, We were meant to host it last year, but it fell victim to the very wet Spring and so it was a real delight to see the sun shine and we arrived at Merchiston ready to play some cricket and see all the hard work indoors over the course of the Winter pay off. The sun was out, but there was a bit of a breeze blowing over the site at Colinton, so none of us realised we were slowly turning a dark shade of red over the course of the day!

This year, we turned it in to a quadrangular, with Belhaven joining us, which meant three games of cricket, and with no overall winner, participation, getting involved and learning lots was very much the order of the day. A slightly different team had been selected, and it was good to see some boys playing at this level of cricket for the first time, and it was a hugely beneficial experience for them. 15 overs a side, everyone bowls and batsmen retire at 25, with no winner as it is all about playing lots of cricket and having fun at the start of the season!

First up was Sedbergh, and it was lovely to see Mr Lush, formerly of this parish, looking after the Sedbergh boys. In our 15 overs, we scored 116 for 3 which was a very pleasing effort in the face of some steady bowling by the Sedbergh boys. Jamie hit the ball had and was retired, as was Arlo who scored a good 26. Given the accuracy of our bowling, I felt that was way above par and that Sedbergh would struggle to get them, and so it proved. We restricted them to 88 for 8 in reply, with the wickets shared around and with a nagging off stump line, Sedbergh found it hard to get the ball away. Our fielding lacked a little sparkle, and this is something we need to address over the next few weeks as it is such a key aspect of the game. So a good win and a solid performance.

Next up. Were our hosts and perennial cricketing rivals, Merchiston. And once again we were put in to bat. The bowling was steady, but Arlo and Jamie both batted very well once again after Edward (19) got us off to a solid start at the top of the order; both of them reached 25 and had to retire, and Tommy also batted well towards the end of the innings, which all meant that we ended up scoring over 100.

From now on, details are rather sketchy as my phone ran out of battery! However, we comfortably restricted the Merchiston batters with more accurate bowling from everyone, and they ended up well short and we had won our second game of the day. Again, the fielding was not of a high standard, and there were too many byes and a few wides. That said, it was strong team effort with bat and ball once again.

For our final game, against Belhaven, we were asked to play just 10 overs as Sedbergh needed to head back down the M6 to Cumbria, and as it was a friendly festival, I decided to reverse most of the batting order to make sure everyone had had a chance to bat during the day. Disaster! 4 run outs in the first five overs: yes, some sharp fielding, but some non existent calling and our lower order batters need to learn the art of judging a single! We somehow manage to limp to a total of 53 in our 10 overs which Belhaven made short shrift of. Again no real statistics from this game, as the phone battery was still dead! Thank goodness…….but messing about with the batting order rarely proves successful and so it was today! We look forward to playing Belhaven later in the term with a full 1stXI!

But a lovely, if long, day, and it is such a good way to get back in to cricket, get used to being outside after a long winter indoors, and a chance to play on grass with everyone having a bat and a bowl. Lots of boys stood up to be counted, with a few of them making a case for 1stXI selection over the next few weeks, and others learned a lot about game play and concentrating for long periods in the field.

Our thanks to Merchiston for a super day’s cricket, and we look forward to a busy next few weeks! There is a lot of cricket to look forward to.