As captain of the 5th XI  I quite often spend the drive to away games trying to work out who my 5th bowler will be, for Saturday's match V Adamstown I spent most of the journey around the M50 thinking who my 3rd, 4th and 5th bowlers would be. So having lost the toss and with Adamstown choosing to bat it was quite disconcerting to be told by my two opening bowlers that neither of them were fit and they didn't think they would be able to bowl at all !!! In fairness to Sean O'Donohue and Scott Talbot they soldiered through 16 overs between them off much reduced run ups and did a good job.  Experienced campaigners Steve Twaddell and Kevin McPhilemy.....yes that Kevin McPhilemy, both stepped into the breach and took a wicket a piece. The real stand out bowlers on the day though were the young spin duo of Ryan Condron (8 overs , 1 wicket for 32 runs) and Zak Woods-Oliver ( 8 overs, 2 wickets for 41 runs) who both bowled excellently . Ryan has been improving all season and has now taken at least 1 wicket in every adult match he's played . Zak (who is only 13) was bowling for the first time ever in adult cricket and if he was nervous it didn't show any signs of it as he bowled with great control and turned the ball even on a damp mat. He really should have had got more than 2 wickets but some shocking (no actually embarrassing) "hometown" umpiring decisions denied him at least 1 more. Riley Shoebridge was again excellent behind the stumps, 1 stumping, 1 catch (should have been 3 but apparantly when a batsman middles one into the keepers gloves it isn't out !!!) and only 2 byes in 40 overs.
The Adamstown batsmen made full use of the Corkagh Park tree and the "local rules"that go with it. For those who have never played there, the Adamstown pitch has a tree on the outfield (not on the edge but in the middle), the home team put a circle of cones around the tree and anything that rolls through the cones is a 4 and it it hits any part of the tree (even a leaf) it's a 6. Needless to say the Adamstown lads spent 40 overs using the tree as target practice which accounted for a high proportion of their 230 for 6. With an outfield that hadn't been cut since June, the ariel route was the only way to get value for your shots which has been a distinct disadvantage for our mainly young side in alot of away games this year. With frequent showers and the mat getting wetter and wetter the target was never really on and the fact that we got as near as 93 runs was down to the youngsters who worked really hard to get as many losing bonus points as possible. Scott Talbot made 20, Ryan Condron a season's high (in men's cricket) of 34 and Zak Woods-Oliver made 11 until he was unfortunately run out. The were well supported by Dave Symmons who made an accomplished 28 before he ran himself out. Malahide finished on 137 all out but all in all a really enjoyable match with plenty of postives to be taken from the performance.