On Sunday the 26th of March, Shetland’s Table Cricket team travelled down to Bell’s Centre in Perth for the National Cricket Scotland Finals. The team consisted of Avril Starmore, Hayleigh Wood, Helen Tulloch, James Sim, Josh Murie and Katie Hunter.
The team had never played with each other before the finals and had only every played against each other virtually in the Table Cricket Virtual League in Shetland. The games consisted of three matches or whoever many matches in the time frame.
Shetland’s first game was against Falkirk A’s. Falkirk won the coin toss and decided to field first. Hayleigh batted with precision providing Shetland with 14 runs including one highest scoring bat of 6 runs. The team continued with the momentum with Katie securing another 8 runs for the team. When the teams swapped, it was 205 runs to Shetland. Falkirk came out swinging with 17 runs on their first batter. It took Shetland a few minutes, but with the help of Josh moving the field to create some dot ball chances it prevented Falkirk from gaining too much momentum. Falkirk finished this match on 260 runs to win the first match.
Shetland appeared to shake of the travel blues in the second match and decided to rack up the runs. Helen perfected her batting technique to seek out the spaces between the fielders to score 12 runs. This, with the added help of Hayleigh’s 22 runs and Josh’s 17 runs gave Shetland 269 runs once all the batters had been. When it was Falkirk’s time to bat, James had been watching what they did in the first match and worked out how to bowl to catch the team out, stopping them scoring more runs. Falkirk ended their batting with 259 runs making Shetland the winners of the second match.
Normally, in Table Cricket it is best of three, but both teams ran out of time. Both teams agreed to have one last batter take 6 bowls to decide the game. Shetland nominated Avril to be their batter. The first ball was bowled wide giving Shetland an automatic 4 runs. The next two balls seen Avril bat another 4 runs followed by an amazing 6 run bat. Falkirk then stopped Avril scoring anymore runs by getting 2 dot balls. It was then Falkirk’s turn to bat. Straight from the get go Hayleigh stopped them from scoring with a dot ball. Despite Josh’s excellent bowling, Falkirk then managed to get three 6 runs in a row. Shetland was now tied with Falkirk and thanks to the fielders, Shetland managed to stop Falkirk scoring anymore points ending the tie in another tie. With no more time to play both teams agreed to end in a tie.
Shetland then had the opportunity to try soft ball cricket against Starthmore. With Shetland never playing soft ball cricket before, it was a quick learning experience from the team. Despite this, Shetland only lost 107-88 runs.
Shetland’s final table cricket game was against Falkirk B’s. Due to time constraints the game was to be decided on only one match. Shetland won the coin toss this time and decided to bat first. Shetland appeared to have learnt a lot from their first game and did not hesitate to put runs on the board. James and Helen began by scoring some beautiful 4 runs in between the fielding team. Hayleigh decided to put Falkirk to the test putting in two risky bats to try and score the 6 runs, which she managed to do. Shetland finished with 254 runs. Katie was the first bowler and managed to deliver some amazing bowls at Falkirk which put them off guard. With every run counting, the dynamic duo of Avril and Josh pulled out all the stops in the fielding team to create opportunities for dot balls and wickets. Falkirk finished with 228 making Shetland the winners.
Not knowing the outcome of the other games, Shetland had to wait to the presentations to find out who had won the National Table Cricket Finals. The team were delighted to find out that they had won, despite only taking up table cricket last year. Shetland are now the Scottish National Table Cricket Champions and have been invited to represent Scotland in London at the Great British Table Cricket Championships.
Shetland Table Cricket team would like to thank their sponsors Lord's Taverners and Malakoff Limited for supporting the team with travel and kits. A big thank you also to Baz McGeachy from Cricket Scotland for organising the day.
(Picture on the left is Baz McGeachy presenting Josh Murie with the shield)
If you would like to learn more about Cricket opportunities in Shetland, please contact Ability Shetland.
