Derriaghy Under 13’s retain Queensway Shield

They defeated Muckamore by 83 runs in their league cup quarter final at Queensway last Monday. The home team posted 117 for 1 with Reece Malone retiring on 41, Jonny Lynch 26 not out and Rory Brown 22 not out causing the damage.

Muckamore were never in the chase and the wickets were shared around with Lynch finishing with 3 for 6, Michael Wilson 2 for 6, Edward Kyle 2 for 3, Malone 1 for 2 and Joe Anderson 1 for 2.

The semi final on Wednesday evening against Saintfield, played at Wallace Park was a very close encounter, going right down to the final ball before last wicket pair of Zack Benson and Edward Kyle managed to scramble the single required to win the game. Saintfield will regard themselves as very unlucky but perhaps paid the price for not keeping their better bowlers to the end. Saintfield scored 89 for 5 in the 20 overs with Jonny Lynch 2 for 16, Edward Kyle 2 for 14 and Rory Brown 1 for 14 the wicket takers. Hugo Henderson was the saviour with the bat with a hard hitting 24 to turn the game on its head when Saintfield looked sure fire winners. This was a tremendous fighting performance from the Derriaghy lads to win their place in the final.

The final against their Lisburn neighbours was played at Wallace Park last Friday. The Derriaghy team went into the game as underdogs having suffered a big defeat to Lisburn earlier in the season.

Invited to bat first, Lisburn lost talisman Michael Glass early on and despite a couple of big blows by Cameron McDowell it was left to the very composed Nathan Doak with 37 not out and Jude Postelthwaite with 22 not out to steer them to a useful enough looking total of 97 for 2 in the allotted 20 overs.

The Derriaghy bowlers stuck to their task with Reece Malone 1 for 21 and Edward Kyle 1 for 12 the wicket takers. Jonny Lynch with just 13 runs from his 4 overs bowled very tightly and was ably backed up by Rory Brown, Zack Benson and Michael Wilson. The ground fielding was of the highest order and this placed pressure on the Lisburn batsmen with Lewis Curry, Joel Dundas and Lynch all featuring strongly.

Derriaghy set about their run chase in a workmanlike fashion with Reece Malone and Robbie Jamison able to pick up singles at will. Once settled they began turning the 1s into 2s and Malone in particular was very fluent. Reece hit 6 boundaries before, under league rules, he was forced to retire on 40 from only 31 balls with the finish line in sight.

Jonny Lynch joined Robbie and kept up the momentum with some excellent running between the wickets and together they steered Derriaghy home without any loss, Robbie finished on an excellent 35 not out with Jonny on 10 not out. This left the Queensway team winners by 10 wickets with some 4 overs to spare.

This was the result of some very hard work by the team and also some excellent planning by the coaching team. The U13 coaches, Scott Hughes and Stuart McAllister were delighted for the team and acknowledged the hard work of head youth coach, Wayne Hughes and overseas coach Kaushik Aphale throughout the season.

Scott and Stuart also acknowledged the efforts of missing players, David Scott, Zac Nixon and Jamie White who have all been part of this squad throughout and expressed their thanks to Rodney Hughes, Graham Kenny and David Skelton for their assistance.