The Rest hold off Asia's charge in warm-up

Last Saturday, an Asian XI took on The Rest in a warm-up game, preparing for the touring season.

The Rest won the toss and elected to bat first. The Sacco brothers, Mark G. and Ronnie, opened the batting. The latter was first to go being caught for six runs in the third over of the day.

Mark Sacco was caught behind for nine runs two overs later. Chris Naudi joined Mike Caruana at the crease and put on a 27-run partnership before being LBW for nine runs.

In came Tim Edwoods who strung up a 110-run partnership with Caruana. Edwoods was bowled on 48 including five fours.

Caruana soon followed scoring 64 runs including three fours. Billy Pitts scored 11 runs not out of nine balls.

Aided with 36 extras The Rest totaled 182 runs from their allotted overs. Kevin Krishna was the main wicket taker with two wickets, while Sagar Krishna, Nadeem Ashraf and Rizwan Zubair all took a wicket each.

In reply, the Asian team opened the batting with Joy Ghoseroy and Javed Shah. They gave their team a dream start scoring a partnership of 62 runs.

Shah was first to go with 32 runs including five fours. Ghoseroy had 35 runs before being caught. Robert Krishna scored seven runs, Nadeem Ashraf 10, Sunny Krishna 17, Zubair seven and Sagar Krishna 19.

Faraaz Bhatti and Samuel Aquilina kept the scoreboard ticking over with Bhatti scoring 23 runs from 20 balls, while Aquilina was on five not out.

Asia needed 10 runs of the final over to win but good bowling from Ronnie Sacco restricted the runs to six and the Asian XI could only score 178 runs from their allotted overs. The Rest won by four runs.

The Marsa team will be playing Staffordshire CC on Saturday and Sunday, both games starting at 10.30 a.m.

The nursery/academy will be from 9.30-11.30 a.m.