End of the road in search for Cup/Trophy glory

On a stunning Thursday evening, Holy Cross took on Livingston (who are quickly turning into our bogey team) on a hard and dry Arbo deck in the quarter final of the Activcity Trophy T20 competition.

With the toss won by the Livingston Skipper, he elected to bat first.

Shan & Bimbo took the new ball for the Cross, with Shan picking up wickets in his second and third overs and Bimbo bowling a tidy spell.

Livingston kept the scoreboard ticking over with a mix of  positives strokes and a number of edges that could easily have gone to hand or skittled the stumps.

Newman took over from Bimbo and was very unlucky not to finish his 4 overs with 3-4 wickets, but still nabbed a valuable brace. Raja copped a bit of tap from the other end and didn't look comfortable in his delivery stride. At that point it looking like Livi might get through to 120+

However, Charlie and Dougie took over and kept things relatively quiet, both picking up wickets at regular intervals, with the odd boundary thrown in. Shan cleaned up the 10th wicket in his final over ending Livingston's inning on 113. Which on that deck and with a very fast outfield, looked to be a few short of a challenging total.

The Cross got off to a good start with 29 on the board before the fall of the first wicket, Charlie heading back to the sheds. Raja followed in quick succession an over later, chopping one back onto his stumps with the Cross still going at 5 an over and looking comfortable.

With 2 new men at the crease in myself and Tom Jordan, we ticked things over at a reasonable rate picking up about 4 an over and moving the score through to 63-2 off 11. Still some work to do but with plenty of wickets in hand, we were looking good to push on for victory.

A change in bowling at both ends saw a rapid drop in scoring rate. The Livi bowlers kept things tight and both Tom and myself just couldn't get bat on ball or beat the field. Before we knew it, with 7 overs left we needed roughly 8 per over.

In the 16th over after 4 dot balls, Tom decided to have a crack and just didn't quite get enough on it and was caught very well on the deep mid-on boundary for 12. I fell the very next ball LBW for 13,  I very nearly tucking my bat under my arm and walked it was that plumb!

So with 4 overs left and 2 new men at the crease in Newman and Nawaz we needed 10 per over. The 17th over was a good one from the Livi bowler, leaving us needing 34 off the final 18 deliveries.

Nawaz ticked things over at about a run a ball and Newman with a mix of cricket and hockey shots took 16 off the 18th over, which gave us all some hope of a mighty comeback.

Newman finished with an impressive 32 off probably about 12-15 balls but it unfortunately it just wasn't quite enough, with Shan being bowled on the final delivery of the 20th over. Holy Cross stranded on 102-7.

It must be said that this was definitely one that got away, as we were looking very good at the half way point. Good luck to Livingston in the next round!