Urmston are off the mark
2:53pm Thursday 8th May 2008
URMSTON finally got their season off the mark on Saturday with a fine win against unbeaten Macclesfield.
But off the field problems continued to mount, as their Indian Cricket League star, Parvez Aziz, had his visa application denied, leaving the club temporarily without an overseas for the next week at least.
After two defeats in a row, a performance was required against Macclesfield down at the UCG, and despite being without the aforementioned overseas star, and opening batsman Chris Watson for this clash, the home side came up trumps with a deserved success.
Skipper Adam Landry won the toss and chose to field, and this looked a great decision, as Urmston's opening pair of Kurt Edginton and Craig Allison decimated the Macclesfield top order, with three wickets for Edginton and two for Allison leaving the visitors reeling at 10-5.
A stubborn partnership between Mark Tunwell and Barney Cutbill added 33 runs for the next wicket, before Edginton, in the first over after the drinks break removed Cutbill for 16.
In an unbroken spell of 19 accurate overs, Edginton continued to take wickets, finishing with the excellent figures of 7-34.
But Craig Melrose, for some reason batting at nine had other ideas, and batting positively took the visitors past the 100 mark, which looked like a decent score on a seaming wicket.
However, the late introduction of Rob Tootell into the attack finally secured his wicket as he mistimed a drive to mid on, leaving the visitors all out for 114.
Urmston did not get the start they were looking for in reply, losing the early wickets of Michael Ness without scoring and Craig Grindley for two, before Adam Landry and Ish Dawood added 41 for the third wicket.
Dawood seemed to be rather unfortunate with his lbw decision off the bowling of Melrose for a brisk 26, and when Landry followed for 28, the game was very much in the balance.
New recruit Boris Allan stuck around for 10 hard fought runs,which brought Neil Lomax to the crease to join James Williams, still needing 38 runs for victory.
Hearts were in the mouths of the Urmston faithful, but they needn't have worried, as the obdurate Williams held his end firm, while the more flamboyant Lomax dispatched every bad ball to the boundary with confidence.
They passed the 114 target in the 39th over with Lomax unbeaten on 33 and Williams on 10 to grab the 20 points on offer.
Urmston hope to announce a new overseas shortly with his likely debut in week five, but they travel to Hyde next week with a solid win under their belts and will look to get some more runs from the top order to really get their season back on track.