Watsonians showed their strength in depth to beat league leaders Grange at Portgower Place on Saturday.

Missing captain Steve Paige away on a stag do and the Scotland Lions trio of Ryan Flannigan and both Chalmers, Ewan & Stuart, playing in Jersey, Watsonians dug deep into the squad and called up Raj Routray, Andy Learmonth, Ali Fleming and Vijay Saisubramaniam.
 
New opening partnership James Easton and Andy Learmonth dealt with the tricky conditions and put on 60 for the first wicket before Learmonth was stumped down the leg side for 26. The main contribution came from Tim Weston who made 59 but when Easton was bowled by former Watsonian Neil MacCallum for 33, the Kiwi professional ran out of partners and the innings petered out to 164 in the 46th over.
 
Due to a brief interruption for rain reducing the game to 49 overs a side, the first innings total was adjusted to 165 leaving the powerful Grange batting line up 166 to win.
 
Once again Paddy Sadler (7 overs 1 for 11) and Mike Legget (10 overs 2 for 33)  produced opening spells of the highest calibre. Legget accounting for Cammy Coles and Neil MacCallum while Sadler removed South African Ian Worth. With the game in the balance former England A international Mike Powell and captain Sanjay Patel set about picking off the runs. Watsonians never stopped trying though and an extremely disciplined display on spin bowling from Ross Paxton and Vijay really put the squeeze on the Grange veterans. Paxton finished with exemplary figures of 10-0-22 but it was Vijay who stole the show, cleaning up Powell, Patel and Giles Holmes returning 3-37 from his 10 overs.

With the final outcome far from certain and Scotland keeper Simon Smith at the crease with professional Roy Adams, Raj Routray (8 overs 2 for 34) came into the attack and illustrated how to bowl at the death, removing both batsmen and securing a famous 8 run victory amid scenes of jubilation from the maroon machine.
 
The clubs first away league victory at Grange in many club members’ memories leaves Watsonians 2% behind Grange in the title race with a double header against Clydesdale and the National Academy next weekend.

Read the report by Bill Lothian in the Edinburgh Evening News here

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 at 8:24 am and is filed under First XI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.