Downpatrick v Armagh 27/7/08

Armagh travelled to Downpatrick for the second away game in two days hoping for a much better performance than they managed the previous day at Woodvale. The team was forced into a couple of changes from Saturday with Matthew Wright Jr and Saturday’s second team centurion Matthew Steenson being drafted in for the unavailable Gareth Robinson and Lloyd Hamilton. Armagh won the toss and chose to bat on a perfect looking strip but got off to the worst possible start when Russell was out to the very first ball of the innings. Just like the Saturday match, Armagh struggled to deal with tight but unspectacular bowling with most players being guilty of getting themselves out rather than being out-thought by the bowlers. Again Kulkarni showed the main resistance with 26 before being harshly adjudged leg before wicket. Alan Whitcroft brought the score some semblance of respectability as he made his way to 19 before being last man out in another woeful score of 82.Again the bowlers took the field with very little hope to work with but to their credit Kulkarni and Stinson stuck to the task and bowled with decent discipline but without reward. The change bowlers of Whitcroft and David Bullick struck with a scalp each but it was merely to reduce the margin of defeat as an aggressive innings of 49 not out from Neil Gelston took Downpatrick across the line leaving Armagh’s campaign in real problems as the teams above them in the table keep picking up wins.Reflecting on the game, McCarter admitted that his team had taken a real blow in losing this one, as it was a fixture at the bottom of the table that Armagh particularly needed to win. “The Woodvale defeat was frustrating but today was even more so because we repeated yesterday’s mistakes when we batted. The pitch was virtually perfect and the bowling was reasonable so we can’t really provide too many excuses for another score below 100. Hopefully we can use this weekend’s enforced break to get a bit of focus back ahead of the derby. Morale in the team wouldn’t be at it’s highest but a good performance or a win would change everything for us. 

Scorecard can be found here