Ones just fall short but threes win on last ball of match

Dartington & Totnes first XI narrowly failed to win a thrilling encounter against South Devon.

Set  an imposing 256 to win D&T fell 10 runs short in a valiant attempt finishing on 245 for 9.

Put in to bat South Devon’s batsmen enjoyed themselves on a fine batting track.  Divan Marais with 62 and Henry Burningham with 65 led the way.   D&T just managed to bowl them out with 2 balls to spare.  The wickets were shared around with Will Gornall taking 2 for 29, Chris Cook 3 for 49 and Jono Colegate and Eddie Verrall each returning figures of 2 for 46.

Replying to South Devon’s formidable total D&T soon lost Harold Stevenson but Colegate and Verrall added 99 for the second wicket before Colegate fell for 70 with the score on 134 and D&T began to fancy their chances.  Kalon Veale continued his good form adding 48 with Verrall for the third wicket before Verrall was caught on the boundary off a full toss. Veale followed soon afterwards for 35, Cook hit 28 and Josh Orrell making his first team debut scored 13 but wickets were falling regularly and D&T fell just short.

D&T’s second XI were depleted due to first team call-ups and it showed  when they were dismissed for just 121.  They would have played with just 9 men had not Mick coopted Sam’s friend, Josh, who fielded with tremendous enthusiasm and no lack of pace (he can run 100 metres in 11.2 seconds).

Batting first D&T opened with the Colegate brothers, Neil and Gavin.  They were relatively untroubled and the scoreboard was ticking along nicely, helped by a generous supply of wide deliveries.    It seemed a score of 200 plus might be on the cards.  However, with 58 runs on the board Gavin chased a wide delivery down legside and was caught for 15 which heralded a dramatic batting collapse.  John Allenbrook went without troubling the scorers; Jon Perkin was trapped lbw for 1, Neil Colegate went for 33 and Matt Haw was soon back in the pavilion.  Nikheel Jina batted well for 19 and other than that it was one way traffic, though Tyler Walton batted nicely hitting a couple of sweetly struck boundaries to secure a third batting point.   Yelverton were relatively untroubled in chasing down the runs for the loss of just three wickets with Mick Rusling bowling a good spell to take 2 for 31 and Sam Tanner 1 for 14.

The third team, also depleted, won a thrilling match against Plymouth fourth XI.  Cliff Lowe hit 54, Gareth Havard 42 not out and Paul Raven with 20 helped D&T to 182 for 7.  Plymouth gave it a good go falling just 6 runs short with their skipper Hart scoring 42 and Shah 39 not out.  At 153 for 6 Plymouth were favourites but Nick Carter took 3 wickets in three overs to win the match for D&T.  The turning point was when he bowled Hart.  The match went right down to the final delivery with Plymouth requiring six runs to tie the game.  Lowe capped a fine match by stumping Blanchett for 11 off the last ball of the innings as D&T won by 6 runs.

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