North Coast Junior Cricket Tour
First ever North Coast Junior Cricket Tour a great success
The North Coast junior cricket tour was the first junior tour Ballyclare High School had ever participated in and both the U13s and U14s squads arranged to play Coleraine Grammar and Limavady Grammar.
The U13s Coleraine Grammar match was really close and Zachary Scarlett’s highest score of the season (33 runs) helped the U13s to 81 runs. Coleraine batted well to reach the target even though they lost 7 wickets, L McIlwrath with 2 wickets. A 3-hour adventure on Tuesday night at Carrowmena Activity Centre doing archery, team building and orienteering and eventually getting to sleep, was a great way to finish the day. Limavady Grammar were the next day’s opponents, a team who had just lost the final of their Ulster Schools’ Cup, so a team that were going to be hurting. They batted first in the 30 overs game and scored a mammoth 172 runs, Z Guy scoring 96no for them. We learned a lot about how to bat in the longer games. Ballyclare’s reply saw the in form Peter Gillespie occupy the crease for a good 31 runs and Bryn McCallan bat his best for 14. However, we batted for 26 overs and scored 116 runs which was a good effort.
Squad: Matthew Wightman (Capt.), Alex Darrah, Luke McIlwrath, Peter Gillespie, Zachary Scarlett, Lewis McClean, Tony Montgomery, Conor Dargan, Max Gannon, Sebastian Kidd, Ryan McKenna, Bryn McCallan, Blake English, Matthew Knocker, Saul Anderson, Alex Corr and Zac Johnston.
The U14s in winning the toss against Coleraine Grammar chose to bat first. Nathan Crooks took 4 wickets and only bowled 2 wides after 4 overs. Coleraine were shell-shocked as Nicholas Johnston had a double wicket maiden over and also took the final wicket. Jay Khanna took 2 wickets and Angus Robson took 1. Coleraine made 62 runs all-out after 14 overs. Adam Cheshire and Oliver Montgomery opened the batting scoring 1 run and 15 (not out). Next Harry Beckington got a golden duck. Nathan Crooks hit 13 runs and was bowled out in 4 overs. Finally, Jake Gordon hit 15 runs not out to beat Coleraine with 7 wickets to spare. After the match the team had a Burger King in Coleraine and then stayed at Carrowmena Activity Centre, where we had great craic in archery, team building and orienteering.
Limavady Grammar was the match we really had to pick our game up for as they had just lost out to RBAI in the Ulster Schools’ U14 final. We elected to bat first and after Nathan Crooks played back to a good length and was bowled, captain Oliver Montgomery (65) and guest player Adam Cheshire (32) put on 93 for the second wicket. However, a major batting collapse occurred with the next 7 batsmen all being bowled and not scoring! Montgomery having scored 50 and retiring came back in at the end to push the score up to 135 of 27 overs. Limavady Grammar’s opening bats hit the ball hard and batted sensibly keeping out the good Ballyclare bowling and putting away the poor ball. In a dramatic finish Nicolas Johnston clean bowled their main batman who was on 35 runs and Ben Lloyd took an outstanding 2 handed diving catch to send another batsman back. Needing 6 runs to win off the last over, Nathan Crooks bowled a good length ball for the Limavady batsman to swipe one for 2 and then another for 4 to win the match with 2 balls to spare. Overall an excellent game of cricket. Unfortunately, team captain E Wallace was unable to attend the tour due to illness.
U14XI Squad: Ewan Wallace (Capt.), Oliver Montgomery, Nathan Crooks, Angus Robson, Harry Beckington, Jay Khana, Ben Lloyd, Harry Clarke, Jake Gordon, Nicholas Johnston, Thomas McKinstry, Adam Milligan and Joshua Kerr.
