NEWS ARCHIVES

June 3, 2008

The Garda Cricket Club continued it’s annual match against the P.S.N.I.- C.C. at the warm surroundings of the County Galway Cricket Club, Oranmore, Co. Galway on the 03/06/2008.

The day consisted of 2 Matches both over 20 over’s a side, with a maximum of 4 over’s per bowler.

The first match was against a Garda Taverners Team and a strong P.S.N.I. team, the P.S.N.I. won the toss and elected to field first. The G.C.C. opened the batting with Tony Sourke and Leo McGraynor. Leo fell for 7 runs, bowled by A Allen. The G.C.C. had only managed 30 runs after 12 over’s. After some excellent fielding Tony was run out and it was left to Robert O’Reilly and Marcus Hand to put some respectability to the score. After some quick boundaries and along with some suicidal running by Marcus Hand (apologies the two batsmen who were run out without even facing a ball) the G.C.C. managed to get 74 runs in their 20 overs for the loss of 9 wickets. The P.S.N.I. managed to get the winning total in the 10th over, mainly thanks to their opening batsman L Kelly who got 24 runs in the first over of their innings and finished with 30 having been caught and bowled by the spritely Dominic Berry.

With the Garda Taverners Team drowning their sorrows at the bar, the second match started, this time the G.C.C. had a much stronger team out to face the PSNI. The visitors opened the batting and where faced initially with the fast bowling attack of Ray Stapleton and Eugene Brennan. Barry Corcoran, Jimmy Sharma and the spinner Pauli Corray continued the accurate bowling for the G.C.C. The home side managed to get wickets throughout the innings but thanks to 67 runs by stalwart PJ Whyte, who opened the bating the P.S.N.I. managed to get 134 in their 20 overs. Ray Stapleton finished on 2 for 29 with a storming final two overs bowling up the hill. PSNI suffered a couple of disputed run out decisions notably a direct hit on stumps by Sean O Sullivan against his opponent who was deemed not to have grounded his bat.

Ray Stapleton and Eugene Brennan opened the batting for the G.C.C., but after a solid start both batsmen fell cheaply. This brought Sean O’Sullivan and Ronan Mahon to the crease and both took up the challenge of getting the winning score, the cricket ball was hit to all parts of the ground and in some cases the cows and the horses in the next fields were running for their lives. Sean managed 24 runs and Ronan 74 runs. With the pressure on for runs wickets fell. Sully was finally caught having launched one very high and fell to a very good catch off the bowling of Mc Cann. Valiant efforts were made by the remainder of the team but Garda ran out of overs. Unfortunately the G.C.C. came up a few runs short at 125 and the PSNI managed their second victory of the day and were able to bring the “Mark SinghCup” back to their home ground in Belfast.

Our thanks to the County Galway Cricket Club (in Particular Ronan Mahon who organised the day and John Cook for preparing a wonderful pitch) for letting the G.C.C. and the P.S.N.I. continue their rivalry at their grounds.