Methlick maintain their 100 per cent record at Lairds
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With no Captain Fantastic, Tim Duffy, or Steve Murphy availablefor the visit of Gordonians, MCC were riding high on confidence with a 100 per cent Grades season still intact and were taking a first look at the lower end of the Gordo’s teams, writes correspondent Mark Woodhouse.
The rock hard wicket looked in fantastic nick as stand in captain, Adam Veersema, opted to field first and see what the visitors had to offer.
Tom Acton took the Beaton Hall end as Mike Hordley opened up from the river end and the two Amrithraj brothers played circumspectly to start with against some accurate bowling.
V Amrithraj decided to go on the attack to try and move the score along, flashing away at anything wide, but it was M Amrithraj who was the first to go with a catch by Jamie Jones off the bowling of Hordley without scoring.
Patel only lasted 10 balls when he too was removed by Hordley for a duck with Brian Anderson taking a straight forward catch.
It seemed that Amrithraj was going to ride his luck with the edge of the bat being his main scoring shot.
Unfortunately for him Veersema came on for Hordley and yet another flying edge was plucked from the air with a spectacular one-handed diving catch from Woodhouse behind the stumps as the third wicket fell for 27.
A capitulation seemed on the cards as Aditya went for 7 with Acton supplying the catch off Addison and then running out Hegde for another duck with a fine run-out, the throw from mid-off just very faintly clipping the edge of the bails.
Mohammed Rehman and Jamie Jones came into the action which coincided with Mohan and Patel deciding to hit out and punish some short and wide pie chucking which added 41 to the score in the space of 6 overs.
However, Jones had his revenge with another Acton catch removing Patel and then Mohan, going for a suicidal single, was well run-out by an Acton-Woodhouse combination.
Addison took a further wicket courtesy of a Veersema catch and the innings was finally wrapped up for 132 for 8.
Some spurious Gordonian umpiring awarded 25 wides against the Methlck bowling!
The ball had been running away quite nicely on a quick outfield and the opening pair of Woodhouse and Acton were looking to push the scoring along.
After a half century last week Woodhouse went early for 9 but Acton and Daniel Reeve took the attack to the Gordonian openers until Reeve was finally caught for 21 after pushing the score on to 58.
A small murmur of concern went up as Hordley then went cheaply for 5 but Acton was seeing the ball like a balloon and reached his half century in quick time supported by the veteran Addison who, pumping those old legs, shocked the crowd by running a three.
Acton couldn’t add any more to his account and was caught on 50 by which time the total was now on 107 and it was up to Addison, holding his bat for 28, and supported by Grant Cordiner to take MCC home with 10 overs to spare and winning by 6 wickets.
A great day for Tom Acton scoring a half century, two run-outs and a catch and bowling 6 overs for only 20.
Next week takes Methlick to Counteswells to take on Gordonians 2nds with an artificial wicket notorious for providing some big scores.
