On Saturday Dundalk Cricket Club travelled down to Laois CC for the quarter finals of the Dick O’Neill Cup. Despite the adverse weather conditions, Dundalk managed to see off the Midlands outfit with a great all round performance by all.
Having lost the toss, Dundalk were sent in to field first, with the rain getting steadily heavier. Opening bowlers Andy Williams and Zaheer Babar began brightly and wickets fell early for Laois, Waleed Shahid and captain Jiwan Jodhani taking the catches. Ricky Chand kept his team in the game with a marvellous 82 runs but his loss sparked a collapse for Laois. Ian Chong swept up the tail-end, combining twice with Babar for two superb catches. After their allotted overs, Laois finished all out for 168.
After the interval, Michael Mullen and Sanjay Kumar began Dundalk’s chase and set the foundations for the win with a solid opening partnership. Both were removed off Chand’s bowling, who continued his one-man-army effort by trapping Boomee Shanmugam LBW. The game was balanced on a knife-edge, but experienced batsmen Williams and Sajan Jeyaseelan saw Dundalk over the line with a huge 122 run partnership, making 54 and 67 not out respectively, finishing with a comfortable 10 overs remaining.
One of the most memorable aspects of the day was the father-son pairing of Ian and Daniel Chong. Daniel is a wonderful example to all in the game, having come through the youths’ system to make his senior debut at the age of just 13 years old. He is most certainly the future of cricket in Dundalk. Youth training continues every Tuesday out in the ground in Dromiskin from 6-7.30pm. For more info, see www.dundalkcricketclub.com or www.facebook.com/DCCYouths.
Senior training also resumes on Wednesday, 6-8.30pm with two vital games in store at the weekend. On Saturday, the 2nd XI visit Merrion, knowing a win will keep them in the hunt for Division 15, while on Sunday, the Firsts face current Division 10 leaders, Railway Union.
Dundalk: J. Jodhani (c/wk), A. Williams, S. Jeyaseelan, W. Shahid, M. Mullen, Z. Babar, G. Armstrong, I. Chong, D. Chong, B. Shanmugam, S. Kumar, F. Boyle.
