Close first game for Scotland's U19s in India
Paddy Sadler contributes the first Blog from the Scotland U19 tour to northern India...
After a fairly uneventful journey we arrived at Dehradun airport to be greeted by warm sunshine and about 30 degrees; a bit of a shock after the Scottish winter! Wrighty had warned us the weather would be "salubrious", but seen as none of us knew what that meant we weren't sure what to expect.
The 45 minute drive from the airport to the academy lasted considerably longer than that! The fact none of the drivers knew where they were going didn't help matters. Eventually we arrived at our
destination and it was definately worth the wait. The Abhimanyu Cricket Academy is situated in a valley of the Himalayas and is one of the most beautiful cricket grounds I have ever seen.
Our first days training started with an SAQ (speed, agility and quickness) session led by Smudger (Simon Smith). It was good to get some miles in our legs after long flight. The afternoon let the boys have a net and gave everyone a chance to do what they do. Friday morning began with a 6.30am gym session putting the poseurs in the squad in their element! The rest of our day was spent in the middle playing our way through new ball and middle overs practices. It was good to get in the centre after a long winter indoors and the session was useful for everyone involved. The levels of committment were good, perhaps too good in some cases, Pete Legget diving full length to try to stop a ball but succeeding only in burning the skin off his stomach! A silver lining for Legget was that he missed the swimming session in definately some of the coldest water I have ever felt.
Legs showed good fight to get to the final of the evening table tennis tournament, the first event of Knoxy's inter-room challenge, before losing out to Tom McBride. The big man clearly makes good use of the table tennis table on his farm!
This morning we had another centre wicket practice, this time working on death and powerplay situations, before a fielding session and another swimming pool warm down.
As I write this, Sri Lanka have just knocked England out of the World Cup and the boys are relaxing ahead of our first game tomorrow. I personally can't wait to get going and I know all the lads feel the same.
Our first game today was against an Abhimanu Academy XI and the short scores were as follows:
Scotland U19 - 201 all out (R McLean 46, P Ross 34, M Cross 30, B Singh 4 for 31, K Singh 3 for 13)
Abhimanu Academy - 202 for 8 (A Panwar 37, A Lara 35no, K Smith 2 for 24, G Main 2 for 40)
ACA won by two wickets.
Both teams played 13 players
We play a Dehradun District XI tomorrow in a day / night match under lights.
Cheers for now, Paddy Sadler
