It was great to finally see some sunshine on the May Bank Holiday weekend after Saturday's deluge and a dark , damp Sunday. Over the last couple of seasons the 5th XI has had a lot of good matches against The Hills 4th XI with both sides having their fair share of success. For our opening fixture of the season we travelled to Milverton with a team of 5 older players (if not wiser) and 6 youth players , two of whom were making their debut in adult cricket (including 12 year old SJ De Klerk), as we looked to continue last season's "youth development" policy.
Having won the toss we invited The Hills to have a bat . For the first half of their innings, Malahide kept The Hills batsman very quiet, Malahide "new boy" , Conor Whelan bowled a very good opening spell including taking the scalp of their star batsman, Harry Archer, for a duck (As an Irish Youth International I'm not sure what he's doing in Division 12 but nevermind !). The brakes were really put on though with the introduction of "spin twins", Alan Quinn and Zac Woods-Oliver who despite being at opposite ends on their respective cricketing careers both bowled with no little skill and guile. Zac bowled his 8 overs right through and his remarkable figures of 8 overs, 2 maidens, 2 wickets for 10 runs in no way flattered him at all.  At
drinks, The Hills were 50 for 3 and restricting them to a total of around 100 looked a real possibility. We continued to work our way through their batting line up with Alex Davies and Ryan Condron joining the Malahide wicket takers but with The Hills leaving all their experience at the bottom of their order , excellent partnerships for the 7th and 8th wickets ensured they reached a very defendable total of 159 for 7 in their 40 overs. Apart from Zac ( 2 for 10) and Conor's (2 for 21) bowling the other highlights were a very good alround fielding display, SJ's first ever overs in adult cricket and a high class display of wicketkeeping from Riley Shoebridge.
After the usual excellent tea you always get at The Hills , Malahide set about trying to get to 160. Openers , Malcolm and Riley started well reaching 20 in 5 overs before Mal attempted to hit a full ball all the way into Skerries Town Centre and lost his middle stump. From there we continued to lose wickets too frequently to mount a really serious challenge and batting looked difficult for everyone except Riley who made a fluent 33 in 32 balls before he was caught behind trying to cut a wide one. From there the innings was held together by a patient and skilful knock from Steve Twaddell who realised that if we batted out our overs we would be there or thereabouts . Steve was eventually out for a well made 23 and some strong hitting from Jef Oliver got Malahide over the 100 mark.
Always disappointing to lose the opening fixture of the season, especially in a local derby but there were some real positives to be taken from the performance that hopefully will lead to another successful season for the 5ths.