Macc fall short in clash with league leaders
WEEK 14 of the season paired Macclesfield 1sts and 2nds against Grappenhall, with the first team travelling to the league leaders.
And, quite remarkably, for the first time this season overs were lost to the weather.
The 1sts, on winning the toss elected to field in game reduced to 36 overs each.
Grappers got off to a flying start with 24 off the first three overs.
Craig Melrose got the breakthrough in the seventh over when he had Ed Barnes caught behind by Jack Mattson for 13 with the score on 41.
Pete Barnes and Grant Hodnett set about the Macc bowlers taking the score quickly to 96 until the 15th over when Fin Nash had Barnes lbw for 42 and in the next over Rob Porter bowled Hodnett for 34.
Porter followed with another wicket when he had Kieran Lawton caught leaving the home side on 116-4 in the 22 over.
What control Macc had then disappeared as
Grappenhall batters – through Albert Pennington (47 not out) and Ben Bodha (31 not out) – put on 74 in 7 overs to declare their innings closed on 190-4, giving themselves an extra seven overs to bowl Macc out.
The Macclesfield bowling figures do not make for pretty reading with normally dependable Melrose conceding 75 runs off 8 overs. Only Nash returned reasonable figures with 1 wicket for 19 runs off 6 overs.
A not insurmountable total for Macclesfield and Rob Porter and Jack Massey started sensibly, working very hard putting on 49 for the first wicket until Massey fell to Sam Guest for 14 in the 16th over.
A good platform was then undone as three batsman went for 0 in 13 balls. John Birchall, skipper James Cross and Fin Nash the victims as the scoreboard reached 59-4.
Mattson and Porter started to rebuild and had put on 20 runs before the former was caught and bowled by Pennington for 10.
Two overs later, with the score on 82, Porter fell in the same manner to the same bowler for a very hard fought 51.
The innings then fell away with three more batters registering ducks with only some lusty blows from Sam Buckingham (two sixes and a four) taking the total to 114 all out in 34 overs.
Buckingham with 23 not out.
Pick of the bowlers was Pennington who followed up his top score in the Grappenhall innings with bowling figures of 9.4 overs, 6 wickets for 40 runs
A disappointing performance by Macclesfield who host Marple next week at Victoria Road. finished