The first meeting this season between the fiercest of rivals Pinatar Pirates and Sporting Alfas went the way of the Albir based club yesterday as they put in a clinical performance to beat their East Coast counterparts convincingly.
Pinatar batted first and failed to cope with the La Manga wicket and the Alfas bowling attack. Spanish internationals Ravi Panchal and Paul Hennessy both fell cheaply as Sporting had the Pirates sinking at 18 for five.
A 76 run partnership for the sixth wicket between Jassi Singh (54) and Vikash Singh (55 not out) stemmed the flow of wickets but two wickets in two balls by Jack Pèrman stopped the recovery effort by Pinatar.
Vikash ran out of partners as the Pinatar tail end surrended meekly to the Alfas bowling and the home side were finally all out for 146 in the 30th over.
Sporting were in no mood to relinquish their stranglehold on the game and they breezed past the required total in the 21st over with eight wickets to spare. Jack Perman celebrated his 18th birthday and school graduation by capping off a fine week with an unbeaten 71 to add to his bowling efforts, that yielded three wickets for just 13 runs. Christian Munoz kept the other end solid with another strong innings (34 not out) to give Alfas the bragging rights in this season´s first contest between the two teams.
Sporting Alfas 157 for 2 (20 points) beat Pinatar Pirates 146 all out (3 points) by 8 wickets.
