Bangor III’s start the season with a win

Sunday saw CSNI IV come to Bangor to start the cricket season for the thirds in great playing conditions considering the run up to the season. CSNI won the toss and elected to bat. Bangor’s opening pair of bowlers, Will Simpson and Patrick Boyd, got the 25 over match off to great start with Will restricting CSNI to a single run in the first over and Patrick taking a wicket, caught behind by Ian Fletcher, with his second delivery to remove the opening batsman who, despite the score, was aggressive from the outset.
Will and Patrick continued in to turn the screw with a tight bowling display (final figures of 5-1-0-10 and 5-0-1-20 respectively), aided by some unexpectedly good fielding for early in the season, before a change in bowlers saw the introduction of Owen Aicken to the fray. The second wicket to fall came with Owen’s first ball to register the first recording of bowled O Aicken, caught P Boyd for the day with score at 44 for 2 in the tenth over. This combination repeated itself twice more as CSNI accumulation of runs was restricted by regular wickets from Owen (4-0-19-3), Iain Chapman (5-0-15-1) and Andy White (4-0-15-2) restricting CSNI to 111 for 7 off their allotted 25 overs.
Bangor made an inauspicious start to their reply with opening batsman Matthew Quinn bowled on the first delivery of the innings. Like all good opening batsman the dismissal was put down to a freak delivery that first swung before moving from leg to take the top of off stump. There may be a few minutes of debate with the CSNI bowler, Adam Simmonite, a fellow pupil at Bangor Grammar School.
Fellow opening batsman Will Simpson was joined first by Iain Chapman and then Andy Pyper to restore Bangor’s upper hand with a couple of high thirty partnerships bring the score to 78 in the seventeenth over when Andy was out. Andy’s dismissal saw a slight wobble as a couple of Bangor wickets went down in quick succession but by this time Will well and truly had his eye in, passing 50 in the 19th over and hitting the winning runs in the 21st over, having carried his bat for 67 runs bringing the final score to 113 and giving Bangor a 5 wicket victory.