Thanks to Amout Kok for the report ….
On the 14th and 15th of September the Andorra Cricket Club took part in its first ever tour. We played two teams, the Armagnac Bigorre CC (ABCC) and the Toulouse Cricket Club.
The first match was against ABCC and consisted of 40 overs, played in glorious sunshine in Seissan, just outside of Auch. ABCC won the toss and elected to bat. Our bowling and fielding has improved greatly since we last played and this resulted in us limiting the home team to 155 all out. This marked the first time that we were able to bowl out an entire team. With spirits high we went in to bat only to experience one of the worst batting collapses in the history of cricket! We were bowled out for 63, with Martin Porter making 42 and thankfully limiting the embarrassment. 6 ducks and 50 runs in total from 11 players was a poor effort.
The second match against Toulouse was played at the same ground, again in sunshine. Spirits were low after Saturday and we took a bit of time to get into the game. This match was played over 30 overs and once again we bowled out the entire team, this time for 189. Toulouse are a strong batting team and our bowlers struggled against some solid batting. Our batting was much better and we were able to score 130 all out. Still some way off a win but at least we didn’t lose so many wickets. In fact, we went from trying to smash everything for 6 in the first match to blocking everything in this match. At one stage we had only 34 runs after 15 overs before we decided to start taking a few more risks.
We drove back to Andorra on Sunday evening having had a fantastic weekend, however quite disappointed that we didn’t perform better. The next step is for us to purchase a practice mat and set of nets which will allow us to practice with a proper cricket ball. We have contacted some clubs around Catalonia to try and arrange a match in Spain on the 27th October. We have been invited to play a 20/20 match in La Manga in December and the Menorca Cricket Club has asked us to come to Menorca and play a couple of matches in May next year
AMOUT KOK
ANDORRA CRICKET CLUB