All round team effort ensures winning start

In their season opener Victoria welcomed Dunmurry, having won the toss captain Andrew Gray opted to bat.
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He sent his two trusted openers in Parks and Black to the crease, Black was the first to fall for a supportive 5. This brought Gray to the crease who along with Parks looked to continue to build a solid Partnership, Parks’ recent good form continued as he worked his way to a well deserved 49 before offering a tough caught and bowled chance to which the bowler grasped.

Gray was joined for a brief time by Bunting, before he was trapped lbw for 2.

Dempster now coming to the crease looked to up the run rate in his typical style, after playing some great strokes and putting the Dunmurry bowlers under a lot of pressure they were more than happy to take the rain break, which seemed to be the down fall of Gray as he played a lose shot first ball after the break and offered a simple catch to point.

This ultimately proved to not be such a bad thing as this brought McClelland in and he set about his usual ways of punishing any bad balls and racing off the mark picking up some valuable runs.

McClelland (31) and Dempster (39) remained not out with a valuable partnership of 78 off 9 overs as they brought the Victoria innings to a close on 196 for four off 35 overs, a vast improvement from last season.

The Dumurry innings got off to a shaky start as Gray and Irwin looked to put pressure on the opening batsmen, Gray nipping the ball of the surface and getting some good carry through to the keeper and Irwin using the ball well to maneuver it through the air making the most of the overcast conditions.

The breakthroughs came as Thompson was introduced to the attack as he sent his off spinners down the wicket and began to pick up wickets.

From the other end Bunting, now the man with the ball, began to pick up wickets of his own. As the pair set of in tandem to build the pressure on the traveling side, Bunting finished his eight overs with figures of 3 for 19.

However, from the other end Thompson was more successful as he picked up a very well deserved 5-22 something that has came from a lot of hard work in pre-season.

The innings was duly wrapped up by Gray and Gilpin the latter getting his first senior wicket.

As things finished Victoria were the victors by 110 runs due to a great team performance from all 11 players.

This week Victoria are away to Drumaness in the Junior Cup.