Red hot pace bowlers crush St Peter’s in season opener

In the season opener heralding the new T20 format King’s visited St Peters where they won the toss and chose to bowl on a green wicket.

King’s opening attack of Muhammad Abbas and Louis Anderson applied devastating early pressure on the home team who were reduced to 7 for 4 by the end of the first spell. Both bowlers shared the wickets equally. Nick Tapper and Seb Macdonald continued the attack and St Peter’s slowly got themselves out of trouble to take the score to 30/4 at the end of the 11^th over.

Harry Sinclair scoring his first runs for the 1st XI

King’s fielded superbly and gave very little away in spite of putting down two tough chances in the outfield whilst Tom Paranthoiene controlled proceeding with class behind the stumps. Patrick Maher and Toby Irvine then came into the attack and conceded four runs in total before the former struck with two wickets in the 14^th over with the scoreboard now showing 36 for 6. Irvine picked up two wickets in the 15^th over, with one of them being a scintillating caught and bowled option.

Maher then wrapped up proceedings in the very next over, again with a brace but off successive balls, finishing with a brilliant spell of 4 wickets for just 5 runs.

King's openers stride out to start the second innings

Harry Sinclair was handed a debut for the 1^st XI, only the second one in 2020 since Irvine made his appearance in the maroon strip in the first match of the year. Sinclair’s was due to the injury and non-availability of Nathan Robinson. Incidentally news that Dimithri Gallage, the batting superstar was playing in his final match for the 1^st XI had just emerged.

Abbas opened the batting with the debutant for company in pursuit of a meagre 38 runs. After pulling the second ball of the innings over square leg for the maximum, Abbas was dismissed in the third over whilst Sinclair was understandably far more circumspect in his approach.

With a ridiculously small target Sinclair was allowed the luxury of leaving lots of balls instead of taking the single to get off strike and he certainly did not throw away this rare opportunity to show his ability in this premier competition. He was now batting in the company of Gallage – contrastingly a veteran and a debutant on display. Gallage was playing in his 44^th match after making his debut four years ago. Unfortunately the veteran batsman could not walk back unbeaten as he was dismissed in the 7^th over with his team relatively safe at 30 for 2.

Sinclair now had another veteran for company in the form of the skipper Cory Dickson who was playing in his 42^nd match and together they took King’s to a convincing win in the 9^th over, with more than half the quota of balls unused.

Debut:  Harry Sinclair

King’s win by 8 wickets