With a number of people unavailable during the holiday season, some last minute changes were required to enable the SPCU and Grades team to put our a full 11 on the day that included a senior league debut for Ruben.
The Grades turned up to grey skies and a pitch that had not had too much preparation after a week of rain and the captain promptly lost the toss and SDCC were put into bat.
Opening up were Jawad and Mark for SDCC with regular bowling award winner Fraser Lawrence and Alan Rennie opening for the Broch.
After a very quiet start of three dots balls, Mark launched the fourth ball out of the ground into the football field as the pair eased their way to 32. A change in bowling brought Pradeep Chinta and a very wide ball tempted Mark to have a flash that ended his innings on 22 caught behind. SDCC 32-1.
This brought Jamie to the crease and his eventful innings finished on 17 as Chinta picked up his second wicket, again to a catch off his bowling following another useful partnership of 45 runs with Jawad, who continued to tease the bowlers by walking across his stumps and dispatching balls through square leg for runs. SDCC 77-2.
Owen came to the crease and provided so much needed momentum, rotating the strike and challenging the fielders as he and Jawad put on another 40 runs partnership. With scorers confirming whether Jawad had hit the ball or not, the umpire signalled a leg bye and Jawad was out next ball for a well played 49 to give Chinta his 3rd wicket and help Jawad avoid the mandatory five push ups when he got to 50. SDCC 107-3.
Fahad and Owen upped the scoring rate with a number of quick singles interspersed with boundaries and put on a quick 72 before Owen was adjudged LBW to O'Neill for a well made 41. SDCC 179-4.
Rufus joined Fahad and with 7 overs left, 200 looked to be comfortably within reach. However, Chris Gospel was brought back and tempted Fahad to try and launch one but was caught on the boundary by Chinta. SDCC 192-5.
What followed was a typical SDCC collapse with the next four wickets falling for 2 runs as SDCC fell to 194-9 with five overs still remaining, as Gospel picked up 2 more wickets and Lawrence picked up 2.
Ruben joined his father and despite the Broch giving him no quarter and two attempted bouncers, he simply left the balls alone or blocked the straight one to see out the bowling.
This allowed Rufus to attack from the other end as he hit a quickfire 32* with back to back 6s including one landing in the car park just where Janet K had parked earlier in the day before she was asked to move it! The pair put on an unbeaten 30 runs with Ruben only denied his maiden league runs by his father refusing to give him the strike.
SDCC 224-9 off their allotted 45 overs. More importantly, the pair were able to rest back the momentum from Fraserburgh as they went into tea following the 5 wicket collapse.
After a nice tea provided by the hosts, SDCC went back out to defend the total opening up with Owen and David R. Fraserburgh sensing the need for a quick start, moved Lawrence up the order to open with Bowie.
Owen struck in the first over, Bowie (1) adjudged LBW for 1. Fraserburgh CC 2-1.
From the other end, David soon joined him as he had G O'Neill (1) bowled by a delivery that pitched on middle and hit the top of off stump, a picture perfect delivery. Fraserburgh CC 12-2.
After a couple of nice 6s, Owen (2-19) took our dangerman, F Lawrence (17) a skier comfortably chased down by Mark for the first of his four catches. Fraserburgh CC 30-3.
P O'Neill joined Liam Bowie and the introduction of Ed (2-13) brought the end to O'Neill (3) as he was tempted to launch end but provided another skier for Mark to gather. Fraserburgh CC 46-4.
Gospel came out but immediately provided an edge behind to go first ball and half the Fraserburgh team were back in the hutch for 46 runs.
Chinta joined Bowie and the pair began to patiently rebuild the innings. Chinta in particularly looked to hit anything around leg to the boundary as they took the score to 97 before Jack (1-17) was able to tempt Chinta into one too many shots and he was caught by David, taking an excellent running catch for 31. Fraserburgh CC 97-6.
Rennie joined Bowie and the pair began to play more shots before both departed quickly. Rennie (11) again caught by David off the bowling of Rufus (1-7) before David came back on to mop up the tail to finish an excellent day for himself with figures of 4-22.
Fraserburgh finished on 127-10.
SDCC win by 97 runs.
Fraserburgh CC MoM: Pradeep Chinta for his 3-36 and 31 runs.
SDCC MoM: A number of people contributed to this win but it goes to Owen for his 41 runs and 2-19 removing the opening bats.
Highlight of the Match: Each and every one of the eleven players made a contribution to the win. In total SDCC used 8 bowlers and all 11 players had a chance to bat. The whole team supported and encouraged each other throughout the day, topped off by the SDCC juniors voting for their own "Junior of the Match" between themselves at the end of the game, picking their youngest junior to show what a close knit bond the juniors have at the club. It may not bode so well for the Parents in the upcoming Kim Taylor Memorial Match vs Juniors match next month if they keep up with these performances!