Date: 29th Mar 2024
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FALLEH AND EVANS HELP COLWYN BAY MAKE EARLY RUNNING IN DIVISION 1

Date: 19th May 2015

A Paul Edwards copyright exclusive for L&DCC Official Website.

Skipper Morris sees a good season ahead

As both Liverpool and Southport and Birkdale have found in recent years, the possession of first-class facilities does not guarantee a place in the Premier League. No one is complaining about this. While the Med Imaging Liverpool Competition insists on certain ground standards from its clubs, it goes no further than that, leaving the composition of the three divisions to be decided by performances on the pitch.
 
All the same, there are some high-class cricketers around the league who regret that a club like Colwyn Bay, where Lancashire will take on Glamorgan in July, are no longer in the Competition’s top division.
 
Well, if the Penrhyn Avenue team maintain the sort of start they’ve made to the 2015 season, those cricketers will get their wish to play at a venue whose location in North Wales is deeply prized by Glamorgan officials as they try to develop the game throughout the principality.
 
Wins over Maghull and St Helens, added to a couple of five point returns from weather-wrecked matches against Northop Hall and Wigan, have left Sion Morris’s side top of the First Division, albeit by little more than a point or two from Sefton Park, Liverpool and Maghull, and the skipper is a contented man at the moment.    
 
“It has been a really good start and I couldn’t be happier with the way it’s gone,” said Morris, whose 90 against St Helens last Saturday helped set up their most recent win. “We’ve played positive cricket in both our completed league games and in the cup matches. We’ve done all three disciplines well.
 
“There have been two main changes in the composition of the side since last season,” added Morris. “Jordan Evans has come back, which has been a tremendous fillip for us because he is a top quality player who could be playing at a higher standard, I think.
 
“He knows all the lads and he’s fitted in perfectly. I think he’s batted four times for us and scored three sixties and a hundred. He didn’t play against St Helens but we still managed to get 200 and win a game.
 
“We’ve also signed a new wicketkeeper, Mike Littler, from Northop Hall. He’s a quiet lad but he gets on with the job and he’s a really athletic wicketkeeper.”
 
Colwyn Bay’s bowling attack has been led, as it was last season, by the Indian swing bowler Samed Falleh, who has already  taken 12 wickets in two games. It is, however, not just Falleh’s strike rate which has made Morris such a big fan of his club’s pro.
 
“Samed’s a fantastic bowler and he’s easy to captain because no one looks like scoring a run against him,” said Morris. “I’m sure there’ll be times when it won’t be like that but at the moment he’s bowling really well for us, just as he did last year when he bowled with a bad elbow injury.
 
“He’s keen as mustard and every week he talks about how many wickets he wants to get and how he wants us to push for promotion. He cares about the club and that’s the biggest thing you can ask for in a pro. Alongside him we’ve got Ryan Holtby, who’s still a youngster even though he’s been bowling in the first team for something like ten years now.
 
“In addition, Paul Jenkins is still one of the best slow bowlers in the league and we’ve got young Harrison Jones who joined us last year from Denbigh and is the heir to Jenko’s throne as such. He hasn’t had a huge amount of bowling but he’s also a quality performer. In fact, I believe we’ve got one of the strongest bowling attacks in the league to be honest with you.”
 
All of which should make Colwyn Bay one of the favourites for promotion. That may be so but Morris reveals nothing more than gentle optimism when it is put to him.
 
“We believe we’ve got one of the strongest sides Division One and we’re not going to be far away at the end of the season,” he said. “If we score 200 every week, we going to win a lot of games because we believe we have the best bowler in Division One.  I believe we’ve got one of the best bowling attacks in the league to be honest with you.”
 
 
      
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