Bad time to deliver poor performance

Donacloney Seconds dropped out at the semi-final stage of the Intermediate cup on Saturday in what must surely go down as one of their worst team performances in recent years.

A huge victory in the quarter final over Muckamore left them travelling to Woodvale’s Ballygomartin Road with a degree of confidence on Saturday morning.

Skipper Keith Martin won the toss, and elected to field on a patchy pitch with some interesting damp spots for the bowlers to target.

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However after a season full of reasonable decent performances with the ball, the villagers bowlers chose a cup semi-final to all have a day off.

They weren’t helped by some very unusual poor fielding throughout the team, with a number of catches going to ground that would have been backed to take any other day, and what started off promising turned into a nightmare as Woodvale racked up 226 for 6 in their allotted 40 overs.

Luke Allison and Alan Thompson took two wickets apiece, while Daniel Casey and Stuart Copeland each took one.

A huge batting performance was needed to dig the lads out of the hole produced by their fielding performance.

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However this never materialised and Donacloney were always well off the pace in chasing almost 6 an over. Father and son Steven and Robert Lyttle showed some fight in the middle order, with Steven crashing a quick fire 59 in 31 balls that included five sixes, and Robert making two maximums in a quickfire four ball innings.

In the end everything died down without much of a whimper, the last five batters putting on just six singles between them as the Cloney crashed to 90 run defeat.

Woodvale beat Donaghcloney Firsts by 117 runs.