Penarth come close against the best (From Penarth Times)

Penarth come close against the best

PENARTH Cricket Club had plenty of positives to take from last weekend, despite two close defeats to the two best teams of last year.

Playing against St Fagans and Sully was always going to be a struggle, but the side responded well and had the fielding and bowling been up to the same standard as some of the batting, it could well have been a winning start.

It was a very close game on Saturday when the home side inserted visitors St Fagans who finished runners-up to Sully last year.

St Fagans captain Alun Evans made a superb 70 and Mike Cannon scored 31 in their total of 225-8.

John Vaughan-Davies marked his debut by taking 2-34 and the ever reliable Mark Frost produced an excellent display of bowling to record figures of 2-29 in his 10 overs. Mark Thomas, Chris Round and Tom Dilnot Smith were the other wicket takers.

Vaughan-Davies led the Penarth reply with 73, and found support from Round 26, Sid van der Merwe 22, and Dave Ricketts 25.

But the St Fagans attack did enough to restrict the home side to 217-8, winning by a narrow 7-run margin.

Glamorgan's Dean Cosker took 3-42 for St Fagans, Owain Hopkins 2-17 and Phil Makinson 2-22.

Bank holiday Monday saw Penarth take on champions Sully at the Athletic Field and once again they came agonisingly close to victory.

Sully batted first and scored 223-7, with skipper Jamie Sylvester hitting 96, Mike Newbold 62 and Mike O'Shea 42.

At one point it looked like Sully might post a score closer to 250 but some good bowling late on by Mark Thomas 2-37 and Richard Skone 3-20 put Penarth in with a shout.

Dave Ricketts and Nick Morgan opened the reply with the latter falling to a catch from ex-Penarth player Sam Docherty behind the sticks for 15.

Ricketts hit 33, Chris Round 45 and John Vaughan Davies 22 as Penarth battled hard in the chase for runs.

A swashbuckling innings of 48 from Kevin Maddox seemed to have put Penarth in a winning position but his loss and that of Richard Skone to a dramatic catch in the deep by Morgan Rushbrook ended Penarth's hopes of victory as they came up 10 runs short.

Jamie Sylvester with 3-37 and Mike O'Shea with 2-30 led the Sully attack.

Penarth will be looking to pick up their first victory next week against Usk at the Athletic Field, whilst the 2nd, 3rd and 4th XIs all hope to get their season off to a winning start.