ESCA Week 3 match reports

Mixed fortunes for the ’Muir on Saturday 9 May. The Firsts made the trip to the Borders to take on Selkirk and, having won the toss and elected to bowl, made an excellent job of the first innings restricting Selkirk to 99/9. Pick of the bowlers was Rudolf D’Souza with 4/21 off his 7 overs.

After losing Shahmir Khan early on, Lawrence Dingre and Abdul Ghaffar got the Firsts into a match winning position before something of a middle order collapse gave Selkirk the victory by 11 runs.

The Second XI’s first home game of the season was an early casualty of the overnight rain, with the groundsman calling that one off at 09:30. The hunt for the Seconds’ first win of the season goes on.

The Third XI made the trip across town to Bangholm, for our first ever game against Botanics CC. This was something of a sentimental trip for Irfan Mohammed, who started his cricket playing career at that ground while attending Trinity High School.

Put in to bat by Botanics, Irfan was reminded that sport doesn’t pay much attention to sentiment, as he found himself back in the hutch with a Golden Duck to his name. George Dickson and Hari Seeba put on 49 to get the innings going, with George going on to make 54. In what was a towsy match on a pitch with variable bounce, Boroughmuir reached a total of 183 with a splendid 44 off 36 from Ashok Rajappan backstopping the innings.

Muhammad Sadiq got the second half started taking two wickets with his first two legal balls for the club (there were a couple of wides in there as well). Rob McAuliffe led the fightback for Botanics with a 55 before falling to Andrew Bentley, but splendid bowling by the Thirds, making good use of the pitch, kept chipping away. Special note to veteran Ian “The Cobra” McCutcheon, whose economy of 2.37 was the sort of stuff that gladdens the heart of a captain.

In the end it was a relatively comfortable 31-run win, with George Dickson picking up the Man of the Match award for his 50.