Limerick Cricket Club’s first XI face an uphill battle in the Premier League after opening day shock to the system against Cork Harlequins at Farmer’s Cross.
There was very few positive points for Limerick to take away from their first league game of the season as the Shannonsiders went down to Cork Harlequins on Sunday afternoon by a margin of 123 runs.
Limerick had a number of debutants as well as some experienced heads in their starting XI, Cork Harlequins too had rung in some changes to spruce up their team for the new season, and so, a muchly anticipated contest awaited.
Limerick won the toss and elected to bowl in the short-boundaried outfield at Farmer’s Cross, located just next to the airport on the south side of Cork city. Limerick had arguably the brighter start with opening bowler Asif Shahab picking up a couple of early wickets and when captain Sarfraz Ramay got the vital wicket of J Hourihane for 32.
That would leave their opponents on 109-4 at the halfway point. However, Limerick couldn’t control the Quins middle order and 109-4 was soon 242-6 after 45 overs. Quins rallied to the end to give Limerick a target of 274 runs to chase.
Limerick couldn’t offer a lot of resilience in reply, losing some wickets early on and leaving too much work to do for their middle and latter order. A sufficient partnership between Arsalan Anwar (67) and Shani Alam (38) wasn’t backed up by any other notable scores; Limerick slumping to 152 all out after just 34.4 overs, more often or not the case for the losing team in ODI cricket when they cannot bat out the full 50 overs.
It was a poor weekend in the lower divisions as well for Limerick, Limerick 2nd& 4thXI’s going down to Midleton and Waterford District respectively, while Limerick 3rdXI were the only team to pick up a victory in the club with a comfortable 5-wicket win over Cork County in Adare.
Three fixtures next weekend for Limerick to bounce back with:
- Limerick 1 vs Galway 1 in Adare (Sunday)
- Limerick 3 vs Cork Harlequins 3 in Farmer’s Cross (Monday)
- Limerick 4 vs Lismore 2 in Adare (Saturday)
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