Over the weekend, Marsa CC figured in a three-game series against The Apricots who were here on their maiden tour to the islands.
The opener was a high-scoring 20-over game during which the visitors batted first and totalled 150 runs. C. Hargreaves was their top scorer with 45 runs as Charlie Pearmund had 39, Peter Eckersley 24 and M. Flick 18.
For Marsa, Bikram Arora took three wickets and Joy Ghoseroy and Nowell Khosla felled a wicket each.
The run chase did not go as expected for the home team as they lost both openers for a duck. Frank Spiteri put in a solid innings of 59 runs, which included six fours and two fours as Arora added 18 and Ghoseroy 21.
The innings of the day, however, belonged to Sidharth Anand.
He smashed his way to 25 runs and took the game away from The Apricots for Marsa to go 1-0 up in the series.
On Saturday, the host side batted first and accumulated 174 runs with extras totalling 42.
Adam Krishna impressed late in the innings with 31 runs.
Paul Bradley made 29, Tony Azzopardi 27 and Ronnie Sacco 21. Marsa were bowled out in the 38th over. For The Apricots, five bowlers – J. Botros, A. Kiszley, C. Williams, R. Botros and R. Prentice – took two wickets each.
Despite the low score, the home team still managed to bowl well enough to defend the total as they ousted the visitors for 145 runs.
For Marsa, the wickets were spread among Tom Newell, Ronnie Sacco, Kevin Krishna, Paul Bradley, Sarfraz Ali and Jonathan Tucker.
On Sunday, the home team were looking for a whitewash but The Apricots found form, Peter Eckersley top-scoring with 77 and Rob Prentice hitting 67 from a total of 258 runs.
Sam Aquilina did well to take five wickets, claiming the fifth with the last ball of the innings.
Marsa could not have asked for a better start in their reply with Ghoseroy (45) and Mark G. Sacco (67) opening the innings that put them on a 108-run partnership.
However, once Ghoseroy and Sacco were out, the Marsa game fell apart and had it not been for 40 extras the total would not have reached 198.
Eugene Duff took four wickets while Lazlo Kiszley and Flick claimed two each.
The Apricots won Sunday’s game but lost the series 2-1.
The touring teams keep coming and next weekend Linklaters CC take on the locals in a two-game series at the Marsa oval.