Malta Cricket weekend review

As suddenly as it started, it stopped and within minutes the game resumed.

The rain did not make the conditions any easier for either batsman or bowler. The fielders were mostly struggling and of one Darren Grech over, two catches were dropped, one even had a collision between two fielders (not sure if the weather had anything to do with that mix up though). Grech was later to be rewarded with two wickets and he just missed out on a hat trick. S.Rudru the opening batsmen scored twenty runs before being LBW. S. Patel scored twenty four runs and Mark Sciberras eighteen runs being the main scorers for the visitors. Extras were actually the highest scorer with thirty runs. This aided the total to 123 runs. The West London team was bowled out with some excellent bowling by Gordon Hewitt who took four wickets in his two and a half overs.

The Marsa team thought this was going to be easy pickings. The West London team bowled extremely well defending their low total. A couple of early wickets had the Marsa team in trouble with only seventeen runs on the board. John Grima (twenty five runs) and Mike Caruana (twenty runs) put on a partnership of forty nine runs which seemed to put the odds in the favour of the home team. Their wickets fell in successive overs.

Javed Shah scored eleven runs and Robert Krishna scored twenty one valuable runs but wickets fell and the Marsa team now needed seven runs to win with only two wickets. Darren Grech (six runs not out) and Kevin Krishna (five runs not out) made sure victory was for the home team.  For the visitors Mark Sciberras took three wickets while S.Rudru and A Iqbal took two wickets each. Marsa go one up in the series.

On Sunday with storms looming around the ground the game actually started. The first innings was played with the odd lightening at the background. The Marsa team batted first and totalled 174 runs. Andy Lenard batted well scoring 42 runs not out, while Bikram Arora thirty one runs, Nowell Khosla twenty eight runs, Andrew Naudi who was run out in an interesting manner where he was backing up thinking of calling a run, deciding not to run and as he turned round to get back to his crease, slips over, tries to get up again, slips and by this time the bowler had the ball in his hands and had the bails off, Naudi scored twenty two runs. Tim Wheeler also chipped in with ten runs as being the main contributors to the score.

After lunch the rains came and again stopped, water was cleared from the wicket and the second innings commenced. After four overs the rains were back and this time ended the game. Marsa win the series.