ESCA Week 7 match reports

Another great weekend for the First and Thirds, and a particularly galling weekend for the Seconds.

Put into the field by Murrayfield DAFS, the Firsts conspired to give away a total of 47 extras, although they tightened things up in the second half of the innings and restricted the visitors to 190. Rudolf D’Souza, and Nithishraj Saravanan the pick of the bowlers, with 3 apiece.

A typical Lawrence Dingre innings (29 runs off 26 balls, and all but but 3 of the runs coming from boundaries) saw the boys off to a decent start, but the pick of the batters was Marcus Cunnington, whose unbeaten 57 saw them home.

The Thirds made the trip to Cavalry Park to take a strong Marchmont 5 team. Electing to bowl the 3s made a great start, having Marchmont at 4 for 2 with both openers back in the hutch as Jonathan Collings and Andrew Bentley made early inroads. The returning Matthew Batchelor, playing his first game of the season due to exams, cleaned up the tail and left Marchmont 96 all out.

However low that total might have been, you still have to knock it off, and the veteran George Dickson got the Thirds off to a perfect start, making 26, as the troll was overhauled for the loss of 5 wickets. The Thirds now sit second in the table, and face Marchmont in the second leg of the head to head on Saturday.

The Seconds’ tricky start to the season continued with a gutting 3 run loss to Musselburgh 2. Opting to field, the 2s restricted Musselburgh to 179. Hassan Durrani and Jamie Good sing the pick of the bowlers, with 4 and 2 wickets respectively.

In response the Seconds got off to decent start after unluckily losing Zafar Iqbal. Kaling Singh batted well, and Ashish Parlani played a superb 58 that had the boys thinking their first win of the season was on the way. Something of a tail-end collapse put paid to that, as we lost our last 5 wickets for 35 runs before Hutton chipped the ball up to short midwicket to leave the Seconds rooted at the bottom of Division 6.