The Roon’d-up: Triple Triumph
The Roon’d-Up is our regular summary of events on the field at West over the 2025 season. We’ll cover all the results as well as outstanding and notable performances throughout the season to keep you up to date on the latest goings on at Hamilton Crescent.
Hat trick of senior wins for our sides this weekend.
The West of Scotland XI won a low scoring affair with Helensburgh at Hamilton Crescent by three wickets. Having won the toss, the visitors elected to bat first but soon fell to 28/4 as opening bowlers James Fennah and Oscar Fry made early inroads. It fell to all rounder Lance Trueman to steady the ship scoring 43 off 82 balls including two hefty 6s. But regular wickets continued to fall as spinner Zeyd Clayburn (4-22) polished off the tail leaving Helensburgh 112 all out. West laboured in reply, falling to 36/5 at one stage and the game remained in the balance until an unbroken 8th wicket partnership between Joe Carrasco (25*) and Tony Hulatt (24*) finally put them in the driving seat. They eventually saw the win home with over 20 overs remaining and maintain their position at the top of Western Premiership Two.
The Partick XI, meanwhile, scored an away victory at Hughenden by 42 runs to revive their title hopes. After losing Chris Ross to injury in the warm up, a first wicket stand of 94 between Sam Jakobsen (33) and Andy Appleton (54) gave Partick a strong early platform but runs generally proved hard to come by. Andy Carswell (35) and Avaneesh Yilapavanam (29) contributed strongly to the batting effort as West reached 208/9 from 47.2 overs. In reply, Hughenden fell well behind the scoring rate early on and never recovered. Skipper Johnny Williams ripped through their middle order taking four wickets, whilst openers Graeme Etheridge and Santosh Kadavath took two and three wickets respectively, as Hughenden dropped to 166/9 from their 50 overs.
In Stirling, Hamilton Crescent completed the treble, defeating Meikleriggs by five wickets. Early wickets from Naweed Zazai (3-22) saw the Paisley club fall to 44/3 before man of the match Saaid Sufi entered the fray, spinning out 4 victims for a tidy 16 runs off his 8 overs. Matched with an improved effort from our 3s side in the field, Meikleriggs were dismissed for a chaseable 123. It proved so, as West made a strong start with the bat, opener Rehan Mirza Ahmed scored 25 and whilst the middle order wobbled somewhat, captain Moosa Vakil saw the chase home with an unbeaten 28 as Hamilton Crescent completed their chase with 14 overs to spare.
Saaid Sufi celebrates his 4 wickets for Hamilton Crescent
Our Sunday side, however, could not match Saturday’s efforts falling 100 runs short of their target at home to Mearns. Having chosen to bowl first there were two wickets a piece for Nikhil Vaz, Oliver Leadbitter and Athsham Hussain as Mearns set an imposing target of 222 from their 40 overs. Sunday captain Rizwan Hussain set an example taking two excellent close catches to support his bowlers. Despite early runs for Vaz (14), Akshat Fondekar (19) and another notable batting performance from Swami Ananthanarayanan (scoring 35 off 33 balls), West were never really in the chase and fell well short of their target.
