Coupar sent to Northern pole

Jun 27 2008

LARGHAN Park was at its supreme best on Saturday afternoon for the league encounter against Perth Northern, who gained promotion last season.

Not since the sixties and the likes of Hynd, Anton, MacNaughton, Brown, Taylor, Pithie & Co. has the outfield run so true and this was to assist Northern in amassing a near record total.

The Perth outfit have some of the old faces, but most were unknown to the Coupar side, which on the other hand are an ageing side with the exception of young Christopher Ewins.

The youngster was drafted in and he fielded with an assurance which belied his age and put many of the senior Coupar players to shame.

Northern batted first with two unknown openers, although Graham Gibbons met up with a fellow Orkadian in left-hander Kevin Keldie, whom Graham said could hit a mean ball.

Coupar skipper Bobby Edington has struggled to find a suitable opening bowling partnership this season, having to rely on his change bowlers for wickets and economy.

Mike Nelson opened from the bottom end, and Gordon Croll was handed the new ball for the first time in many a season.

The openers made a reasonable start, with Gordon having Ian Ramsay caught by Kenny MacNaughton, whilst top edging a fairly innocuous delivery.

With the benefit of hindsight, Kenny ought to have dropped the ball, as this only served to bring Andy White to the crease and after a shaky start, he single handedly tore the Coupar attack apart.

According to spectator and opening batsman for Perth Northern, Malcolm Maclaren, Andy had never scored a 50 in the league before Saturday.

Some inept bowling of short pitched deliveries, full tosses and half vollies, combined with some poor fielding, served up with the rapid outfield enabled Andy to reach his maiden century, which it has to be said was not the classiest of knocks.

Kenny MacNaughton took a routine catch to dismiss Keldie, who nicked an edge from a Croll away swinger.

That was as good as it got for 27 overs and during that period Andy White and James Sangster hammered the Coupar bowling all over the park, with the home captain chopping and changing the bowling to little effect.

Chris Stuchbury struggled to find a length initially, although he did manage to remove the experienced Steve Pedgrift, who top edged into the awaiting hands of Kenny MacNaughton behind the stumps.

Chris bowled Lawrence De La Range in the last over as the visitors were pushing for 300.

This must have been one of the poorest performances by a Coupar Angus side for many a year.

The only really positive aspect of the day was the introduction of Chris Ewins, who threw himself at everything and at least tried to take some catches.

In Andy White and James Sangster, Northern had two match winners. Andy was on 111 when he was caught and bowled by the home skipper. His innings included three sixes and 15 fours.

Brian Rodger had James Sangster bowled with his slower away swinger and his performance was out of the Warren Sutherland mould.

His 83 contained one six and 13 fours, so it would be reasonable to suggest that Andy and James were grateful to the quick outfield, as manicured by the staff from Perth and Kinross Council.

The Coupar players may not have known that Saturday was the longest day of the year, but they certainly knew that it was a long and agonising afternoon in the outfield.

Despite the enormity of the task, openers Warren Sutherland and Kenny MacNaughton were in optimistic mood as they prepared to make inroads on the Northern bowling attack.

The pair began well and were scoring at five runs per over, which was marginally short of the required run rate.

Things were looking good and both looked comfortable against the medium paced attack, until there was another farcical run out involving the talented pair.

In the 11th over Warren found himself stranded, when Kenny turned down a quick single, and had to make his way to the pavilion thinking of what might have been having scored several hundreds in recent seasons.

Kenny battled on, although others failed to hang around and support him.

If the fielding performance was suspect, then words can hardly describe how poor the batting was and with another two run outs, communication was not much better.

Five batsmen failed to trouble the scorers and with 288 required, Kenny would have needed to have produced the impossible and as it was he ended up undefeated, but stranded, as John McIntyre looked around to see his stumps resemble bagpipes.

Perth Northern 287 for six (Andy White 111, James Sangster 83; Chris Stuchbury two for 28, Gordon Croll two for 43, Brian Rodger one for 47, Bobby Edington one for 52), Coupar Angus 149 all out (Kenny MacNaughton 65 no, Warren Sutherland 32, Bobby Edington 16; Ian Ramsay five for 39).

They lost by 139 runs against one of the teams from the bottom of the league does not bode well and with Strathearn heading to Larghan this Saturday things may become worse for Coupar.

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