On a beautiful sunny Saturday CSNI 2nd XI made the relatively short trip across the lough to play Cliftonville Academy 2nds at the picturesque setting of the Castle Grounds. CSNI skipper, Gareth Lutton won the toss and invited Cliftonville Academy to bat first.
It was very much a youth look to CSNI 3rds today and that was definitely reflected in their opening bowling attack of James Fisher and debutant, Benjamin Crowe. Both bowled very tidy and controlled spells restricting Cliftonville Academy batters in the first session of the match with Fisher picking up a wicket for his efforts.
A change in the bowling attack brought Harshit Kokate (2-41) and Vishal Gorka (2-48) into the action. They both continued the work of the opening pair, bowling with good control and picking up two wickets each.
After the drinks break Cliftonville Academy gained momentum in the batting and started to score a bit more freely with top scorer of the match, Sagar Kinger (87), being the main contributor. Other notable contributions came from Keshav Raghuram (28), Oliver Scott (26) and Jonathan Parr (21). Luke Fisher (1-34) also picked up a wicket late on as Cliftonville Academy closed out their innings on 248-8 off the allotted 40 overs.
After the break CSNI’s innings got off to a slow start as Cliftonville Academy’s opening bowlers made life difficult for CSNI’s openers. H.Kokate (0), C.Kirk (2) and RJ.Copeland (1) departed early on bringing together the brother pairing of G.Lutton and P.Lutton. They went about building a good partnership and adding a bit of impetus to the innings with a few much needed boundaries until G.Lutton was bowled by B.Anderson for a well made 32.
This brought veteran T.Dalzell in at number six to join P.Lutton and continue the impetus of the innings. The pair settled in quickly to a useful partnership with the runs starting to flow courtesy of a few boundaries including two maximums from Dalzell. Unfortunately the partnership ended with T.Dalzell (47) bowled by Steen and followed shortly after by P.Lutton (53) trapped LBW to the same bowler. A bit of resistance towards the end by B.Crowe (12) saw CSNI’s innings fall short on the day on 198 all out in 35 overs.
Overall a good display by a relatively young side with some very pleasing individual performances in the bowling and fielding supported in the batting by some of the older heads. Player of the Match for his 53 runs was P.Lutton – well played Pat!
CSNICC 