Date: 14 May 2008

Venue: Muckamore Cricket Club

Ballyclare High 1st XI hosted RBAI 2ndXI at Muckamore CC in the second round of the ‘Ulster Bank’ Schools Cup. A hot summer’s day provided the perfect conditions for batting and with RBAI winning the toss; they had the chance to take advantage by batting first and setting a good score on the board.

Ballyclare’s opening bowlers were Josh Dailly and Simon Beattie who they kept the runs down in the early overs and had the Inst batsmen looking edgy. Daily finished with figures of 0-32 off seven overs and Beattie with 0 -13 off four overs.

With the Inst. batsmen starting to play themselves in, it was time for a change of bowling. Alan Blain was brought into the attack and produced a great bowling performance taking 2 wickets for 16 runs off nine overs. He removed A.McCarthy for twenty and P. McAllister for thirty-one. This was backed up by a solid bowling performance by Robert Smith who took 1 - 37 off nine overs. A run out by Blain off the bowling of Smith reduced the Inst. batsmen further. RBAI finished with 149 runs for four wickets off thirty-six overs. A competent bowling and fielding performance gave Ballyclare an optimistic chance of chasing down the RBAI total and reversing the losing result from last year’s quarter final.

Josh Dailly and Johnny McCrea opened the batting for Ballyclare High and they produced a superb opening partnership of 140 runs the highest in the Ballyclare’s school’s cricket history. Dailly produced a fantastic captain’s performance finishing on 90 not out and was helped by McCrea who hit 27 runs. Ballyclare hit the winning runs with still twelve overs remaining to record a win by nine wickets.

The quarter final draw has resulted in an away match to Bangor Grammar which is provisionally scheduled for Thursday 22 May at 1.30pm start.