THE Credit Suisse Channel Islands cricketers won their sixth match, out of seven, in the National Over-50s Championship yesterday.
At the Plessey Ground, in Cowes, the CI defeated the Isle of Wight by nine wickets to record their second victory in consecutive days.
The CI, who were joint top before yesterday’s success, complete their Group 3 programme tomorrow away to Wiltshire and a further success will gain them progress into the knock-out stages of the competition.
CI skipper Keith Dennis won the toss and he put the Isle of Wight, the weakest side in the group, in to bat.
And it proved a good decision as Dennis’s bowlers tied their hosts down with some excellent disciplined bowling.
The Isle of Wight batsmen later admitted that their was simply nothing to hit following some very accurate bowling.
Jersey’s Tom Gales was the most productive bowler with four wickets for 20 runs in his nine over spell.
But it was a team effort with Jersey’s Barry Middleton (five maidens) and Guernsey’s John Tall and Ralph Anthony (five maidens) conceding 14, 21 and 17 runs respectively all from nine overs.
The Isle of Wight closed their 45 overs on 104 for nine.
The Channel Islands’ reply was a classy opening partnership of 95 runs between Jersey’s Paul Robson (54) and Guernsey’s Mike Webber (39 not out).
The winning runs, including 15 boundaries, came up in 16.3 overs in just over an hour of play.
CI skipper Keith Dennis said: ‘Excellent, another good win and great concentration and determination from the team.
We have a very good team of cricketers this year and they are all supportive.
‘Winning is another step towards reaching the knock-out stages and hopefully we can reach that stage for the third year running tomorrow.’
Article posted on 20th July, 2004 - 12.00am
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