In another close finish, Selkirk scraped a hard-fought win at Haddington on Saturday to end the season in fourth position in Division 3 of the ESCA leagues.
The Neilson Park ground is generous to the batter, with the outfield cut short and running downhill away from the square. So when Selkirk were all out for 134 runs, there was a feeling this total might not be enough for the visitors.
However, thanks to early breakthroughs for skipper Daniel Heard (2-30), and Ian Gardiner’s spell of the season, the hosts were unable to get past the visitors’ total. Ian conceded just 12 runs from his eight overs, and despite not getting a wicket put the brakes on the home scoring and gave the visitors a chance.
Earlier the Haddington bowlers had shown the way with slower bowlers providing the stiffest challenge on an unpredictable wicket. Big individual scores looked unlikely from the off, with Greg Fenton hitting two fours off his first two balls and then missing the bounce on the third delivery and skying the ball for the Haddington wicket keeper to get under and take an easy catch.
Todd Dekker, playing his last game for the club, also took two fours off his first two deliveries, but had to show some caution to build an innings. He’s had some outstanding knocks for Selkirk over the last couple of years, and will be sorely missed both on and off the field. He signed off by top-scoring for the visitors with 45, including a sumptuous six over the long on boundary.
The most successful bowler on the day was Callum Sholto-Douglas (3-20), who eventually clean-bowled Dekker for the first of three wickets. Arguably, though, the bowler presenting the most challenge to the Selkirk batters was Ash Kumar (2-10), who claimed two wickets in a spell bowling 25 deliveries without conceding a run.
Kumar also claimed the wicket of Alex Massie (23), who had helped the Souters recover from a mini-collapse (three wickets going down without a run being scored), leaving Selkirk on 68-4 in the 14th over. Massie was caught at long on, where Ben Parks took a solid catch running in from the boundary.
Heard played a captain’s part when he came to the wicket with his side hirpling past 100, adding 23 invaluable runs before he ran out of partners with six overs unused.
The general feeling at the break was that if Haddington were to use all 40 overs they were likely to get there. However, the East Lothian side also had to recover from early losses, and when they would have hoped to make progress were stymied by Gardiner and others in their run chase.
Not for the first time this season Bob Wilkinson was asked to bowl at the death, with Callum Sholto-Douglas (52) and Rob Macdonald (16) having successfully scored off most balls. With two overs remaining they required 20 runs for victory. They took eight off the penultimate over, and scrambling for twos they set up a last ball challenge after they could only take a single of the fifth ball.
Haddington needed a boundary off the final ball of the contest – four for the tie, or a six for the win. Neither was achieved – Wilkinson proving up to the challenge by bowling a delivery which the batter missed and which swished in to Dekker’s gloves.
The victory meant Selkirk had won the last four league games of the season and finished with a winning record in a campaign where this seemed unlikely at times.
Match report by Neil Gentleman, with photos by John Smail.