John Grima
Two contrasting matches at Marsa last weekend first saw the Marsa select team whitewash the Swansea University Touring XI and the following day the result saw a convincing win for the tourists!
In the Friday T20 match, the University team found themselves in difficulty from the start as they were down three wickets for only 15 runs.
A superb piece of fielding from Frank Spiteri saw wicket keeper Sam Aquilina whip off the bails for an early run out. D Scott (44) and J Peeke (18) batting in the middle order steadied the team and produced some runs.
Tail-enders R Verrier (11) and J Storer (8) took the team score to 123 for 7. Marsa used nine bowlers and the wickets were shared between F Ahmed Akbar 2, and one each for F Spiteri, G Lobban, N Khosla and guest player from Australia Jamie Ancilleri.
In reply the Marsa openers, Sam Aquilina (33 off 17 balls) and B Arora (25 off 10 balls), were in full flow with the bat scoring four sixes and five fours between them!
F Spiteri (14) H Majeed (26) and Mark Sacco (19) finished the game off in 13 overs! For Swansea Uni, C Lamb bowled superbly taking three wickets for only 14 runs.
Marsa went one up in the series.
On Saturday, the Swansea Univ. team changed a few of their players for the 40 overs match and were determined not to lose the series. They won the toss and elected to bat first.
O Hills and R Ravel opened. Ravel (5 runs) was caught at mid off by Feroz in the early overs, which brought J Peeke to the crease.
Peeke scored his half century and shortly after, when on 55 and forming a partnership of 99 runs, decided to reverse sweep a ball passing wide on his leg side and in doing so hit a catch back to the bowler G Lobban! A strange dismissal indeed!
O Hills went on to score a century, hitting sixteen fours and two sixes along the way to his tally of 138 runs. He was out stumped on the last ball of the innings. The Swansea University team totalled 229 runs for 7.
For Marsa, G Lobban took three wickets, P Bradley two and one each for A Balakrishnan and A Naudi.
On paper, the Marsa Select team was short of batsmen although the total was gettable if the innings was paced well.
The visitors had other ideas and opened with the strong pace attack of P. Davis, W Treloar and A Shaw. They bowled accurately dismissing the top four Marsa batsmen, T Wheeler (5), F Ahmed Akbar (0), P Flynn (0) and J Grima (16) cheaply.
A Naudi threatened to attack the bowling, but after he fell for 25 runs and the score on 62 for 6, it was left to the final four batsmen to play the remaining 20 overs out.
A Balakrishnan (27 runs) and P Bradley (30 runs) managed to play a few shots but in the 28th over Marsa's final wicket fell with the score on 150.
Marsa lost by 79 runs. Full credit to the Swansea University bowlers and the bowling honours went especially to J Platt who took five wickets for his team.
So this two-match series was drawn and we hope to host the Swansea University touring team again in the near future.
Umpires: Alan Swift and Les White
Scorer: Eric Balakrishna
Man of the Match: O Hills for his 138 runs.
Match summaries
Twenty20 match: Swansea Univ. 123 for 7 (J Peeke 44, D Scott 18; F Ahmed Akbar 2-19) lost to Marsa Select 127 for 4 (S Aquilina 33, H Majeed 26; C Lamb 3-12) by 6 wickets
40 overs match: Swansea Uni 229 for 7 (O Hills 138, J Peeke 55; G Lobban 3-43) beat Marsa Select 150 (P Bradley 30, A Naudi 25; J Platt 5-43) by 79 runs
This weekend at Marsa there will be the start of the 25 overs Cricket Summer League. Tomorrow : Marauders vs Melita CC - 10.30am start; Sunday: Krishna CC vs Marsa CC - 10.30am start.