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THIRTEENTH NATIONAL DAY TOURNAMENT.

The Gibraltar Cricket Association staged its thirteenth National Day Tournament on Saturday at the Europa Oval, with last year’s winners, “The Legends”, retaining the trophy in a tight finish.    Christian Rocca thus made it twelve consecutive wins in this Tournament.    Only four teams were entered this year so it was decided to play a round robin competition with each playing each other twice.

Proceedings got under way at just before 11.00am. with a match between the two sides who were eventually to fight it out for the Trophy, the Legends and Calpe.    The former, consisting as the name might suggest, of mature players batted first and totalled 60/1 in their five overs, with Richard Buzaglo undefeated on 22 and Rocca run out for 20.  In reply, the Calpe youngsters fell eight short of this total, only Ross Harkins with 25 not out making any significant contribution.

Grammarians faced GCC in the second match, and undefeated knocks of 28 by Kieron Ferrary and 21 by Adrian Hewitt enabled the latter to post the respectable total of 62/1.   In reply, Grammarians could only total 54/2 with George Shacaluga top scoring for them with 20 runs.

Grammarians were in action once again in the next contest and totalled 55/2 against the Legends, Sebastian Suarez scoring an undefeated 21.   The Legends passed this total without loss in 3.5 overs, Rocca leading the way with 25 not out.

Calpe then made light work of defeating GCC, Mark Bacarese (26 not out) and Chris Phillips (28 not out) enabling them to reach a total of 63 without loss, in reply to which GCC could only muster 44 runs, with Ferrary again leading the way for them with an undefeated 25.

GCC then faced the tough task of denting the Legend’s unbeaten record, the match getting under way at nearly 2.00pm.    Batting first, GCC could only total 40/2, hardly enough to worry their opponents, who passed this total without loss in 3.2 overs.

The next match saw Calpe post the highest total of the day and easily a record for this competition.  They totalled 104/1, with Karan Aswani (27), Steven Gonzalez (26), Ross Harkins (21) and Iain Latin (22) all helping themselves to runs.    Grammarians replied with a total of 67/0, Kabir Mirpuri top-scoring for them with an undefeated 27.

A great deal depended on the next fixture between Calpe and The Legends.   Batting first, Calpe totalled 66/4 with Latin (21) and Aswani (23) their main contributors.   In an exciting finish, the Legends fell four runs short of this total, despite knocks of 27 from Rocca and 24 from Andrew Chipolina.  Despite this defeat, the Legends continued to be the favourites to lift the Trophy, having lost considerably less wickets than Calpe.

At 4.00pm., Grammarians again faced GCC and could only muster a total of 44.  However, GCC did even worse only scoring 31 runs in their allotted overs.  The Legends nearly fell a cropper in the next match, only managing to total 36/2 against Grammarians.   However, the latter could only total 32 in their reply and the Legends had thus got out of jail!

Calpe continued on their winning ways in the next match against GCC, scoring 53/1 in 3.2 overs to overhaul their opponents’ score of 52/2.  Karan Aswani scored 30 not out in this match, the top individual score of the day.

The match between the Legends and GCC got under way at 6.25pm., the latter totalling 49/2 and the Legends replying with 52/0, and in the final match of the day Grammarians’ total of 59/4 was not enough to deny Calpe victory, Latin scoring 25 in their total of 63/0.

Previous winners.

1994                        UKCCC

1995                        GCC

1996                        GCC

1997                        Calpe CC

1998                        Calpe CC

1999                        Calpe CC

2000                        Calpe CC

2001                        Calpe CC

2002                        GCC

2003                        GCC

2004                        The Legends