Falkland see off Dunnikier to get their hands on Fife Cup

After some heavy showers of rain during the day, the weather improved at night, and thanks are due to Freuchie CC for their efforts to get the game played.

Steven Meikle won the toss and decided to bat, and openers Cameron Nellies and Lyle Robertson got Falkland off to a good start. Nellies scored 29 but all the Falkland batsmen did well, everyone contributing to a good score of 134 for 4 off the 10 x10 ball Overs in this new format to this competition.

This always looked like a good score but a late Dunnikier rally saw them come to within 15 runs of the score, although the Falkland bowling remained quite tight.

A few errors in the field did not help Falkland’s cause but in the end the victory was deserved.

This was the first time that Falkland have won the Fife Cup since 2015, and captain Steven Meikle was rightly proud of his young team which contains many players of great promise.

Scoreline: Falkland 134/4 (C Nellies 29, S Meikle 22) Dunnikier 119/8 (T Aziz 37, M Safi 30 not out, J Singh 26) Falkland won by 15 runs. Played at Freuchie 18/7/2019.

Falkland’s fast disappearing chances of winning the Strathmore Union were dealt a serious and probably mortal blow on Saturday at Meigle when a young Falkland side went down to a very heavy 6 wicket defeat to the League leaders.

No-one looking at the weather on Saturday morning would have given anyone much of a chance of a game of cricket, but the weather turned a lot better the further north we travelled,and we were able to start at 1.15 pm. Meigle inserted Falkland in difficult batting conditions, and only Cameron Nellies with 23 and then Connor Langlands with a very enterprising and impressive 38 made anything of the tight Meigle bowling, for whom professional Raj Gayashan was particularly impressive.

Yet 110 did not seem totally indefensible in the wet conditions, and for a while Meigle were pegged back until a stand of 50 between Raj Gayashan and Neil Wimberley swung the balance in Meigle’s favour. Falkland’s best bowler was Lyle Robertson who bowled 9 Overs for a very niggardly 14 runs.

Falkland will now need a miracle now to win the Strathmore Union, but there were many positives for Falkland considering that so many of the team are very young with a debut given today to Logan Briggs. There is a great deal of talent in the Falkland team, and I am sure that today was part of a learning curve. Next week, Forthill XI come to Falkland.

Scoreline: Falkland 110 all out (C Langlands 38, C Nellies 23, R Gayashan 3 for 19, C Clark 3 for 26) Meigle 111 for 4 (R Gayashan 52 not out).