Cricket in Cartama, Colts vs Codgers
Youth v Experience
By Ian Higgins
If you had happened to be passing Cartama Oval on Saturday, from a distance you would be forgiven for thinking there was a lawn bowls tournament about to start you’d be mistaken. The newly formed Costa Del Sol Codgers Cricket Team with a combined age of around 620 were there to take on the Costa Del Sol Colts, the new under 14’s team.
The Colts had been training hard with their coach David Young before the game and were keen to get to get the match underway.
The Codgers batted first and lost an early wicket, Jamie Riley
removing Diego from the crease with a classy caught and bowled off his first ball. Matt and Jeremy steadied the ship with a combination of fine stroke playing and good running and kept the run rate at around 8 per over. With the score around 80 in the 13th over, returning for his second spell Jamie struck again, this time with a good catch from Harry Scott out on the boundary to send Jeremy back to the pavilion for a respectable 14, Matt followed him an over later for a hard earned 19.
The Colts tightened the screw with some tight bowling from Alex and Max, sharp fielding and first class wicket keeping from Braydon (2 stumping’s) wickets began to fall, Morly(13) and Iggy(retired 25) were the only other batsmen to reach double figures.
At tea the Codgers were Happy with their score of 151 for 8.
The Colts lost a wicket second ball of the innings, Diego getting his revenge on Jamie and whipping the bails off to run him out. This brought Brayden to the middle who, supported by Talha, immediately set about destroying the Codgers bowling attack with some powerful shot
playing and quick running, James bowled Talha in the 8th over only going for 11 runs off his 4 overs. Alex took up where Talha left off, running well and playing a supporting role before getting caught out by the long arm of Cooper off the bowling of Morly, trying to go over the top.
Harry, having been hit about a bit in the first innings was determined to make his mark on the game, and that he did, playing some text book straight drives and some seriously fast running between the wickets, eventually being caught by James Riley on the boundary off the bowling of David Cooper for a brutal 26.
With the pressure off and the Colts cruising to victory, Braydon having given the Codgers a batting master class, retired on 69. The Codgers got a consolation wicket with a one hand diving catch from Pete off Iggy’s bowling, leaving Khurram and Thomas to bring it home for the youngsters.
The Colts won easily by 5 wickets with 27 balls remaining.
A big thank you to everyone that came to support, David Young, Egan Dantis and Ian Higgins for organizing, scorer Mick Button, Umpires Ray Fry and Afzal Shah and of course David Cooper at Sports world Spain for hosting the event.
