The club was delighted to welcome our 2024 professional, Bismillah Khan, this week. He made his first social appearance at the Pavilion on Thursday, pretty much straight off his flight from Pakistan, only to be subjected to a disappointing ending to his countrymen’s match against the USA (exciting as it was for us neutrals). He celebrated with us afterwards as Scotland secured their first T20I victory over Namibia to take them to the top of Group B.

Bismillah’s introduction to the EPL on Saturday was a baptism of fire as we hosted Heriots at a blustery Myreside. Heriots won the toss and batted first. Josh Elliott, Heriots recent overseas signing, anchored their innings coming in in the sixth over and carrying his bat on 141, including 13 fours and a 6. Elliott’s fellow South African Vian Maritz added 60 late in the innings to help our opponents to 285/5 off their 50 overs. Our own batters had a tougher time with the chase never looking likely as wickets fell at regular intervals. We ended on 138 all out after 40.3 overs.

The 2s won the toss against Marchmont at Cavalry Park and batted first on a notoriously difficult pitch. After a couple of early wickets, George and Megan ground out a good 42-run partnership against Marchmont’s openers and first change bowlers. Xander and Will upped the scoring rate later in the innings, helping us from 80/5 to 168/8, well clear of the previous highest score at Cavalry Park this season (145/5 off 40 overs by Marchmont 2s in week 2). Marchmont’s openers started positively but Ollie and Mati soon got into their strides, taking two wickets each to have Marchmont 37/4 in the tenth over. Dan took a fantastic catch at gully for Ollie’s second wicket which the Frogbox sadly didn’t pick up. Credit to Jacob Hartley for Marchmont who came in at number five and made an excellent 50 not out but ran out of batting partners while Marchmont were still 46 runs short of our total. Will Ellison was our player of the match with 34 not out and 3/19 off his 8 overs with the ball.

The 3rd XI visited Kirkhill to face Penicuik 2s and, losing the toss, were asked to bowl. This was made trickier first by us starting a player down, awaiting youngster Alex Turner who was still playing school cricket against Fettes at this point, and second by our opening bowler Jamie Reid pulling up with a hamstring injury after only one ball had been bowled. Credit to Daniel Bryen, who might not have expected to bowl but stepped up to deliver 7.5 overs straight, taking 3/24 including three of Penicuik’s top four. Our youth stars, Ben Hogg and Alex Turner, each got set batters out, Ben taking two wickets in two balls and Alex Penicuik’s Ethan Wood who made an excellent 86. Penicuik finished on 163/9 after their 40 overs. In our chase, everyone pitched in. Kevin Singh looked assured again, top scoring with 43. When he fell, we were 112/4 and soon 122/6, at which stage our success looked less than assured. However, Jaideep and Ben both batted calmly to get us to 155/7 and then Magic got us over the line with a quick 10 off nine balls, securing our win with three wickets and eight balls remaining. We progressed to third position in Division 5, hard on the heels of D&C 2 and Livingston 2, the only teams to have beaten us yet.

The 4th XI chose to bowl first at Craiglockhart as they hosted an undefeated Edinburgh South 4s team. South’s openers made us sweat a little, putting on 38 for the first wicket. However, Jamie Stevenson’s 3/5 and some unusually good fielding, including five catches and an extraordinary run out by Toby Tucker, limited our opponents to 102 all out. Even a 5-fer for Division 8’s leading wicket taker, Prabhneet Singh, couldn’t stop us as a team batting effort was finished off by a cool boundary for our youngest player, Ethan Haire. We won with one wicket and nine balls remaining making it three wins in three games for the 4s!