Darragh O’Shea’s unvincibles continued to vomit on the face of English grammar this evening at The Cricket Field as they saw off Cork Harlequins’ Masters in an entertaining tie that saw the hosts maintain their unbeaten record in the Cork T20 Cup.
Midleton won the toss and elected to bat first on a stunningly warm evening. Opener Simon Casey fell early to John Buss’ bowling, but fellow opener Adrian Stack and Manan Gujjar quickly steadied the ship, Gujjar’s five boundaries helping him to the evening’s highest total of 33 and sending the run rate into overdrive. Magsi kept things ticking over, but once Stack finally fell for 7, Atif Jameel lit up the innings, hitting three successive sixes before being run out by Rahman. The middle order continued to pile on the runs though, Ali Kalota adding 19 and Andy Pye hitting a classy 20 to set the visitors a target of 158, Cotter the pick of the visitor’s bowlers, recording figures of 3/28.
Despite the intimidating total and the even more intimidating bowling of openers Luke O’Reilly and Atif Akbar, the Masters lived up to their reputation of a classy batting side. Akbar, though, was to prove to be the star of the show, a vicious swinging delivery dismissing Claassen before a wonder throw from the deep ran out Siblee. Despite a back injury, Magsi claimed two wickets, including the dangerous Buss for 31. Winslow breifly went boundary crazy before being run out by Stack from Kalota’s bowling, before Stack produced an erratic display of bowling that took two wickets in an over followed by a wide laden dreaded 10 ball over to see out the game, Midleton winning by 29 runs.
