2nd Metropolitan Cup - Las Condes vs. Santiago

Las Condes, the 2002 Santiago League Champions, initiated their 2003 campaign on Saturday at the Grange School ground against a fancied Santiago side who were still smarting from a narrow defeat against the PWCC the previous week.

Santiago were put into bat on what looked like and soon turned out to be a bowlers wicket and were soon two wickets down with just one run on the board with both Santiago's openers back in the pavilion.

Marcus Yorke-Long and Blair Douglas then steadied the ship before Douglas was well caught at first slip by Hollis giving Messner his second victim. Sean Jones took his second wicket for Las Condes shortly afterwards when Yorke-Long mistimed a straight drive giving the bowler a simple catch.

The Messner-Hollis combination saw the back of Anglin four runs later, again superbly taken by Hollis in the slips leaving Santiago on 26 for 5 after just nine overs.

Messner continued to rip the heart out of the Santiago order as Shalders and Desmaras quickly fell to his spell of accurate Medium quick seam bowling. At 40 for 8, early tea looked imminent, but the experienced Chris Brown had other ideas as he came in and leapt on the bad balls from the second string bowlers for a confident looking 31 not out. The Santiago tail, unfortunately couldn't stay with him and when Graves became Messner's sixth and Willemse was stumped by Wollocombe, Santiago were all out for just 77 runs.

The Las Condes openers, Hickman and Wollocombe, achieved what Santiago had not, on the other hand, through a good deal of grit and determination against Santiago's strong left and right bowling attack of Douglas and Anglin. The breakthrough didn't come until the 10th over with the score on 22 as Wollocombe was alleged LBW to a full length inswinger from Anglin.

Hollis was not able to pick up where had had left off in the South American Championships and was out cheaply giving Douglas his only wicket of the match. However, Matthew Hickman was still looking good despite the good bowling and, supported by Andy Salmond-Smith, the pair took the score to 46 before Hickman was bowled off another Anglin inswinging missile.

Salmond-Smith continued to thump the ball with a relish until he holed out on 16 to Douglas off a good over from Santiago's young hopeful JP Fassnidge.

Shalders and Fassnidge then began to eat their way through Las Condes's middle order to expose a shaky looking tail until the Las Condes Captain Clive Marriott managed to steady the ship and Messner cracked the winning runs with just two wickets remaining.

Tim Messner was awarded Man-of-the Match for his fine spell of 8-3-13-6.

Points awarded Las Condes:18,Santiago:7