Over the weekend, Marsa CC played twice aga-inst new touring team Cardiff University. A four-game series was agreed upon with the first match played last Thursday and the fourth today.

The best game so far was the one of Sunday.

Cardiff batted first and collected a huge total of 252 runs. There was great batting from M. Grossett, who made 87, and N. McAndrew, scorer of 64 runs. D. Booth added a valuable 30 while B. Wigley chipped in with 12 and N. Kent 16.

The target was a daunting one for Marsa who were bowled out for 77 runs the day before in reply to Cardiff University’s 265 runs.

Nowell Khosla and Chris Naudi opened the batting and put on a valuable partnership of 103 before the latter was caught for 32 runs.

Khosla was next out, top-scoring with 76 runs which included 12 fours. The Marsa batsmen kept collecting points though with Haroon Majeed (16), Sam Aquilina (14), Andy Naudi (12) and Bikram Arora (36) contributing to the score.

Thirty-eight runs from eight overs were needed with the fiery pacemen of Cardiff having seven to bowl. In the end, Patrick Spiteri (16) and Zubair (19) succeeded in seeing the home side through in the very last over of the game.

For Cardiff, Booth was the main wicket-taker with three. With Marsa’s win, the series score became 2-1 in favour of the visitors.

In the opening match from the series on Thursday, Frank Spiteri (57) had held the batting together with Chris Naudi and Malcolm Crabbe making 17 each and Justin Brooke 12 for a total of 132 runs.

Cardiff, however, made the runs required in the 18th over with J. Prew (63) and M. Grossett (39) among the main scorers.