Aberystwyth (133 for 2) beat Aberyswtyth University Commoners (132 all out) by eight wickets.

Fine & Country West Wales Cricket Club Conference

ON an uncharacteristically windy and bitter June day, Aberystwyth’s WWCCC XI took on the University Commoners in the West Wales Cricket Club Conference sponsored by Fine and Country.

With both teams looking for an important win, Aberystwyth won the toss and decided to bowl first on a green wicket that was expected to offer assistance to the bowlers.

So it proved, and scoring was not easy for the Commoners in the face of tidy opening spells from Peter Loxdale and Rhys Jones.

Despite being asked plenty of questions in a real battle between the opening batsmen and bowlers, the opening partnership for the Commoners survived and, after 10 overs, began looking to accelerate the scoring.

However, the breakthrough eventually came for Aberystwyth in the 11th over with Loxdale bowling out the opposition captain Pickering.

A change of pace came after this with Anthony Evans and Nigel Salmon applying more pressure and, despite a solid 41 from Mo Aslam, Aber began to take regular wickets, assisted by some sharp catching.

The wickets were shared by all six of the bowlers used and the tail was cleaned up by Jack Allen and Steffan Davies, whose final figures of 3 for 3 of 3.1 overs were the pick of the Aberystwyth bowling attack on the day. Commoners were dismissed for 132 in the 40th over of the innings, setting Aberystwyth 133 to win.

The sun finally showed itself and batting conditions improved markedly in the second innings.

Steff Davies and Anthony Burrell got off to a quick start and were going well until Watson bowled Burrell with an in-swinging delivery.

By this time however, a lot of the work had been done. Mat Jones and Matt Dodds both contributed to key partnerships with Davies, whose unbeaten 65 wrapped up the victory in quick time, with the winning runs coming in just the 16th over.

Watson and Hozefa claimed the two wickets to fall in Aberystwyth’s eight-wicket victory. Steffan Davies produced a man of the match performance with ball, bat and in the field.

With so many games in the WWCCC currently being played on artificial pitches, many players commented after the game about how good it was to play on a grass wicket that offered something for both batters and bowlers.

So many thanks to groundsmen, Dai Jones and Robin Varley, for all their hard work in preparing such an excellent playing facilities, especially after the difficult weather conditions in the spring and early summer.