Second XI suffer frustrating week after double defeats

Having beaten Templepatrick the week before and having first eleven players such as Robert Kennedy, Michael Taylor and William Montgomery available for the Thursday evening 20-20 and then to actually lose by 7 wickets was the cause of much frustration amongst the team.

Ballymena batted first with Stephen Colgan scoring 40 and Robert Kennedy not out for 44 contributed to a good total of 127.

Both men batted aggressively, taking every opportunity to score some valuable runs for their side.

Taking the field Ballymena were confident of defending this total however with the weather conditions worsening and the ball becoming difficult to control the Templepatrick batsmen took every advantage.

R. Bryans batting very well for the opposition scoring 44 not out. At the end 127 was not enough, and Ballymena lost by 7 wkts.

The seconds poort form continued to Bangor were they tasted defeat yet again.

Bowling first, the Ballymena men restricted Bangor to just 150.

Pick of the bowlers again was Mathew Purse who was extremely unlucky not to take a single wicket but ultimately was just too good to find the edge of a bat on the day.

On Saturday, it was the first outing for young James McClean keeping wickets. The talented NCU under 13 star certainly has great potential behind the stumps, and will no doubt take to the senior stage in the near future.

Andrew Craig and Jack Gibson bowled with good economy picking up a wicket each and although being more expensive than usual Mathew Bell picked up 2 wickets from 38 runs.

When batting, again it was Stephen Colgan and David Montgomery leading the way scoring 31 and 21 respectively. Unfortunately, the other incoming batsmen struggled with a spinning wicket with the next top contributing batsmen being Jack Gibson scoring 15. All in all it was a poor batting performance, and Ballymena ended up losing by 57 runs.

Captain Stephen Colgan will expect better from his team during this weekend’s game v Holywood.