Cobo beat OVs by five wickets to lift CI title

Cobo beat OVs by five wickets to lift CI title

Guest player Tom Nightingale ended proceedings with a six over long on from the only ball he faced, leaving Guernsey champions Cobo to celebrate winning the quadruple they craved after man-of-the-match Josh Butler showed his all-round class.

Olly Newey’s side came into the game having already won the two domestic Evening League competitions and the Weekend Championship and the captain might have struck the winning runs himself, only to be caught at deep mid-off with the victory in their grasp.

Newey had made a brisk 22 in a fifth-wicket stand of 49 with Butler who struck seven fours in a fine knock to add to his 5 for 34 with his off-spinners.

Five hours or so earlier there was a distant end-of-season feel to proceedings as the match got under way at 10.45, the visitors inserted. Cobo have had an issue with wides all season and it reared its ugly head again in the opening over from Luke Nussbaumer which brought 11 runs, just four of them off the bat.

Olly Newey opened up from the Blanc Bois end and proved to be a whole lot tighter than his new ball partner’s initial offering, but Nussbaumer’s radar was working well in his second which yielded just one more to the total.

The OVs had arrived with a young side, notably the talented U17 Ed Giles, son of former Jersey paceman Jon, and the U15 Dylan Kotedia.

Providing the experience was Jonny Gough, Andy Dewhurst and Tom Minty.

Cobo, in contrast, were perhaps as strong as at anytime in this year’s CI competition, even without Will Peatfield, Ben Ferbrache, Jamie Nussbaumer, Tim Ravenscroft and Lee Savident, but able to replace them with the likes of Ash Wright and Tom Nightingale, normally a Wanderers player.

Having been put in, OVs must have felt satisfied to see Dewhurst and Stephen Le Maistre come through the opening four overs with their wickets intact and 19 on the board.

Neither man looked wholly convincing but they were doing their job – surviving – and Le Maistre, in particular, was not at all interested in anything wide.

In truth, the opening half hour was not the greatest advert for the two islands’ premier sides.

The bowling was tepid, lacking direction, the batting tidy and hardly dynamic.

It was not until the eighth over that a forceful shot of any quality was played, Dewhurst dropping onto the back foot to smack a short ball from Newey through wide mid-on for four.

Le Maistre looked incapable of playing an attacking shot, but at least he was using his head to stay around and negate the new ball.

For their first change Cobo turned to Kris Moherndl’s gentle seamers to replace Nussbaumer for the ninth over, but the wide bug caught him too.

It was all wasteful stuff from the Cobo attack, while OVs must have quietly been muttering ‘bring it on’.

Moherndl’s opening over brought two wides and then a wide half-volley which allowed Le Maistre to ping the ball to the boundary.

By the end of the tenth, OVs has safely negotiated their way to 38 and you felt that both sides were biding time – Cobo waiting for the moment to get their two spinners, Veillard and Nightingale, into the attack and OVs to simply push the accelerator having been allowed a start. Intriguing was the best you could say about the opening hour’s play and the hope was that it would soon get better.

The 50 partnership came up in the 12th and then, finally, some drama. OVs went for a quick single, Moherndl pounced at cover and a quick throw in saw Damarell whip off the bails. Le Maistre was gone.

The visitors were 87 for 1 at drinks and three overs later Dewhurst passed 50. Soon after, he holed out off Butler to Nightingale stationed on the mid-wicket boundary and despite a late order cameo from James Duckett, OVs had failed to make the most of their solid start.

Ash Wright and Olly Nightingale put on 30 for Cobo’s first wicket before Tom Minty grabbed three fairly quick wickets to have the Seagulls on a nosedive at 56 for 3.

But Butler and Zak Damarell settled things down and their stand of 57 went a long way to winning the game.

Full results inside Monday’s JEP

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