Meigle are worthy winners

It would be churlish in the extreme to suggest that Meigle’s clinching of the Strathmore and Perthshire NEC title was by default.

The only justification for that would be that the only side capable of catching them was Strathmore and they were one of two games which were rained off on Saturday so their challenge fizzled out.

No one can argue with Meigle’s outstanding league performance, however, since they have the second highest completion rate of fixtures in the league – 11 out of 17 – and their 100% record is the sort of performance which deserves to win any league.

They will now go into the playoffs and hope to continue that unbeaten form, which they kept up at the weekend when they batted first at Victory Park and, thanks to a half-century from Shazab Saeed, set Mannofield a target of 206 to which the visitors made a rather woeful reply of 95 for nine in going down by 111 runs.

Finishing second bottom of the table, Mannofield will be relegated since Aberdeenshire are coming down and the clubs cannot have two teams in the same league.

It was always going to be difficult for Kinloch at Countesswells and, although Muhammed with 37 and Alam’s 35 helped scrape up a total of 137, Harshad Parkar’s three for 13 and the two for 12 from Pranav Saravanan kept the target low.

It took ASI Gordonians less than 27 overs to get there, although they lost seven wickets in the process. Himanshu Saraswat’s 31 and 25 from Aman Arora steered them safely home to win by three wickets.

Falkland and Dundee HSFP were slated to face each other for the second time in three days with Dundee having come out on top in their midweek Counties Cup semi-final but the rain put paid to any hopes of revenge so it was left to Arbroath United and Perth Doocot to play out the third game in Saturday’s league schedule to come to a conclusion.

Perth set a catchable target of 164 with Usman Saeed cracking 38 and Paul Wilkinson 31 with Alan Hogg taking four for 44.

Despite 32 from Greig Peal and 32 from Murray Clarke, Rory Pennycook’s three for 28 and a couple of wickets for Iain Chalmers saw Arbroath back in the pavilion for 132, a result which keeps Perth Doocot in fourth place with a respectable six-from-nine league record.