On Saturday the 40-over winter series between Betfair C.C and Krishna C.C began. The series will be played before each round of the 20 over Winter league, meaning once every four weeks.

The Krishna team batted first in a very windy day. Nowell Khosla was not bothered with the wind and was scoring freely making 55 runs including three fours.

The next two batsmen did not worry the scorers much. John Grima, in fine form recently, kept it going with 40 runs. Another five batsmen failed scoring 15 runs between them. Dhruv Duggal saved the innings with a fine 28 runs from 19 balls. The Krishna team totalled 142 runs from their innings.

For the Betfair team Mike Caruana took three wickets while Tony Azzopardi and Gordon Hewitt took two wickets each.

One must note a good catch taken by Tony Azzopardi who ran ten metres, just getting his hands on the catch.

The Betfair reply had a very steady start with a 23 run partnership between Dave Borg and Dave Mansfield.

Mansfield was the first to go after a great piece of fielding from Kevin Krishna which had him run out.

A good batting display came from Chris Naudi making 29 runs before being bowled. With 66 runs needed to win, Betfair looked out of the picture.

At the wicket were Tony Azzopardi (31 runs) and Mike Caruana (16) gave the run chase a good go.

Alas they both were stumped by John Grima off the bowling of Will Nichols. They managed to take the score to 130 runs. Krishna win the first encounter.

For Krishna Will Nichols finished with four wickets, a very good effort. Dhruv Duggal took two wickets and Robert Krishna took a wicket. During this innings there were two good catches, one by Darren Grech to dismiss Borg (20 runs) who had to run and meet a hard hit ball at chest height, and the other by Tony Slater who had to move to his right full stretch with the wind pushing the ball away from him and still catching the ball.

This weekend the Marsa C.C play against new touring team, The Pimlico Strollers, from the United Kingdom, a 40-over game on the Saturday and a 20-over game on the Sunday.

On Saturday the Sunoco Cricket academy/nursery will be from 9am till 10.30am.