2023 season gets under way
Finally the cricket season is back for GMCC!!
The first team travelled to newly promoted Mattishall who have been a bogey team for them in recent years. Thankfully this was not the case again. Stand in skipper C Greenslade won the toss and elected to bowl. A super spell of bowling on his First XI debut from youngster James Alcock saw him take 2-13, Josh Wright was equally impressive in his long awaited return to the First XI, 3-18 and the seasoned veteran Kyle Weston 3-31 with Meltons superb fielding performance resulting in 2 runouts. The home side only setting Melton 80 to win. B Mann and Evans opened up and it didn’t take long for B Mann to get going and hitting the ball in all parts with ease. Evans the other end was more than happy to watch the fireworks from the other end. An emphatic win in the end by 10 wickets, reaching the total in 9.2 overs. B Mann 53* and Evans 25*.
With everyone super excited that cricket was back at Melton Park, the visitors Mattishall won the toss and elected to field. What they didn’t expect was to be chasing as many as they were. A well done anchor from C Rushton at the top of the order with 41 and a swashbuckling knock from Skipper Aston with 92 off 85 rocks, and hitting 6 big ones. This saw Melton post 202-9 off their allocated 45 overs. In return D Weston and G Ryan struck early leaving the visitors 24-3 but a rebuild saw them get up to 80-3 before Cook and Cunningham make a vital breakthrough and end the partnership and pretty much the Mattishall hope. And if there was any hope left superstar G Ryan ended it all with a flurry of wickets and finishing up with a super 5 wicket haul. Mattishall 123 all out. Super start for the 2nd XI.
This also saw a return for the 3rd XI at Town Close, but unfortunately it wasn’t a happy return. Playing their first game in Div 1 after a superb promotion last year it wasn’t the best start for them. Mellis were the visitors, Skipper E Fawad won the toss and chose to bat. Melton failed to bat their allocated overs and were bowled out for 149, only notables were Parfitt 41* and Khalid 32. In reply there were some good bowling performances without reward by S Shani, A Patel and Y Patel. Mellis in the end got the target 1 down with plenty of overs to spare. A big learning curve for the 3rd XI in a new league but I can’t wait to see them bounce back.
