Marsa win to surge ahead, Overseas close gap on Melita

On Saturday, the MCA Summer league continued with two games.

In the first game Marsa took on Krishna. Marsa won the toss and elected to bat. The Marsa team managed to face the full 20 overs losing their last wicket on the last ball of the innings. They only managed to score 81 runs.

A wonderful bowling spell from Andy Naudi, who was the main wicket taker, saw him take three wickets from four overs with only five runs being taken off him. Kevin Krishna snared two wickets while Tosif took one. The Marsa team had one saviour, opening batsman Mark G. Sacco. He was the only batsman to make it into double figures. Sacco scored 49 runs not out.

Marsa had a tough job ahead of them against the Krishna batsmen. Derek Ali and Dave Newton bowled extremely well capturing seven wickets between them. Ali took four.

This spell of bowling destroyed the Krishna backbone which left Martin Llewlyn (two wickets) and Mike Caruana (one wicket) to clean up the remaining batsmen.

Pierre Naudi was the only Krishna batsman to reach double figures, scoring 14 runs. Krishna were bowled out for 55 runs.

Marsa won the game and moved top of the standings with 26 points.

In the second game, Melita played Overseas in what turned out to be a low-scoring game.

Melita batted first and totalled 98 runs. Joy Ghoseroy top scored with 26 runs and towards the end of the innings, John Rusher (14 runs not out) and Nathan Brimmer (eight runs) managed to put on a last-wicket stand of 21 runs. For Overseas, Roger Bradley and Justin Barloggio were the main wicket takers with two each.

The Overseas managed to make the runs in the 18th over with Joe Wilson chalking up the best score with 48 runs including five fours. Bradley played well, scoring 28 runs.

For Melita Andy Lenard was the main wicket taker with three. With this win, the Overseas moved off the bottom of the table. They are only one point behind Melita and three points ahead of Krishna.

Tomorrow, Marsa take on returning touring team Leyland in a twenty-over game and then two 44-over games over the weekend.