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When it was all said and done, it was P2, W2 on the evening. However, that doesn’t even begin to tell the story…and it really is one, inter-connected story.

The U15s travelled to Kelburne. No transport problems…just player availability problems. The grand total of U15 players available was 4 – with at least another 13 unavailable! Normally it’s easy – steal a few from the U13 team. And so it happened. The U15s eventually got to 11 (after a call-off at 5pm!) and amazingly, the U13s also managed to field a full 11 for their league game too. There were U15 debuts for Remo Margiotta, Ross Bain and Jose Mubarek and U13 debuts for Daniel Cairns and Tarun Koteeswaran (both of whom have a cricket age of 8!).

At Titwood, despite having most of the usual core of the team ripped out and moved up to the U15s, the U13s recorded a very confident win. Accies batted first and posted 73 from their 16 overs. There were wickets for Kallum Dhami (in a good, controlled spell of 4-0-8-1), for skipper-for-the-evening Rohan Dhami (4-0-15-1) and Tarun chipped in with a good run out, as well as bowling one very tight over for only 3 runs. The team management had some slight concerns over the depth of the batting, so an 8-wicket win was really not, in any way, expected…particularly when the scored was 2/1 off of the first over! But Team Dhami (is that the correct term for a pair of Dhamis batting together?) built an excellent 2nd-wicket partnership. Kallum, in particular, enjoyed opening the batting and made an aggressive 33 retired – including 4 fours and a big six. And, although one further wicket did fall, the U13s comfortably got home with overs to spare – with Adam Sadiq finishing 16 not out too.

Over to Kelburne, where it was anything (and everything) but comfortable. Clydesdale bowled first and Sheryar Awan (2) and Sam Tung (3) destroyed the top order. 23/5 off 5.5 overs. However, Jak O’Connell was still there – having scored 18 of the 23 runs to that point. At this was the format for the rest of the innings. Clydesdale bowled, Jak dispatched it to all parts…but was left cursing the long outfield as several balls just stopped dead in the outfield. Arbuckle proved him with support and the Clydesdale fielders (one drop, one “oops, I forgot to walk in so couldn’t reach the catch”, a couple of “oops, do we need to stand at the stumps to get a run out?” and several pretty poor efforts at moving for the ball) certainly helped out too. Kelburne 111/5 off their 18, thanks to a quite brilliant 79* from O’Connell. It was well-paced, well-judged, with only a few alarms (a very close run out appeal and a very, very close LBW shout) and very intelligent…rotating the strike well, hitting over the drawn in field and working twos into the spaces. The one real positive was that the total had not been boosted too much by extras – only 14 being given away.

With the coach declaring that the opening pair of Selby and Awan would probably need to score roughly 112 of the 112 runs needed to win the game, what was not really needed was for Ilan to play all around a pretty decent first ball and get cleaned up. Sheryar and Owain built a decent partnership for wicket #2 – 34 before Owain (9) became the first of the 4 run out batsmen. (And, of the 34 runs to this point, 11 had been extras.) The next partnership between Sheryar and Tayeb Mahmood probably needed to get the U15s almost all the way home. But it would only be 31 before Tay was stumped following good work from O’Connell...and Zain Ashraf followed 3 balls later. Clydesdale 67/4. And it really was a case of game over. However, with 18 coming off the next 2 overs, it was game on again. Sheryar, who had been dropped twice, had warmed to the task of trying to guide the younger batsmen through and all was going well…until he ran Gregor Anderson out for 3! But the partnership had been worth 23 and suddenly only 22 runs were needed off 25 balls. It was, by this point, pretty dark. Ross Bain ran himself out but Sam Tung and Sheryar added another 12 fairly comfortably before Sam was bowled. 103/7. Then 105/8 (Ihtisham Malik, having played a very sensible forward defensive shot first ball, tried to launch one out of Paisley and missed!). Last over, 4 to win, 2 wickets, Remo Margiotta on strike.

Dot, single. 3 off 4, Sheryar on strike, surely game over? No. A dot, then another dot (with Remo run out backing up too far!). 3 needed off 2. Single! 2 off 1 and Jose Mubarek on strike. Field comes in far too close, a chip to mid off, one completed, Sheryar runs a second, Jose forgets to run, both batters standing together at the bowler’s end, ball thrown wide of the keeper to where short fine leg is, Jose begins to run (and would still have been out by half a pitch), fielder forgets to watch the ball into his hand and it rolls away, Jose home, game won. And then someone had to explain what had happened the rest of the team as it was so dark “we couldn’t even see the stumps!”!!!

An exciting win, yes. Ultimately a very, very good win – with a lot of extremely inexperienced players playing. But some big things to learn from. The fielding was pretty shocking (even allowing for U13 standards) and the field placings did make life fairly easy for Jak – despite him batting very well. (Perhaps, bowlers could think about what they are trying to do? Maybe even, dare we mention it, bowl to a plan? And, maybe, put the fielders in the right place before they bowl – not after the ball’s been hit to same place on several occasions?) Batting - it really is about partnerships. Sheryar and Owain, Sheryar and Tay and Sheryar and Gregor being the backbone of the reply. And, despite the pressure at the end, there were some pretty poor run outs too.

A game with many twists and turns and two exceptional innings from Sheryar and Jak (from Kelburne). A tie would probably have been a fair result. But, bowling less wides and having 11 fielders (despite the lack of experience) and more importantly being able to throw some wickets away towards the end of the innings proved the difference on the night.