Wright proud of his Greens

Twenty-four hours after their nail-biting victory over Norway, Guernsey made it back-to-back successes with another character-filled performance to defeat Denmark at a sunny KGV yesterday.

Although the batting failed to fire on all cylinders once again, the Sarnians were indebted to a crucial late cameo from Jordon Martel as they crept up to 118 from their 20 overs before the bowlers went to work and, backed up by some at times outstanding fielding, they came up trumps.

‘It’s turned out to be a brilliant week,’ said coach Ash Wright, who sat out the last game with a hamstring injury.

‘I’m really proud of the lads because, like we’ve been saying, if we end up winning two games in this format we’ve done absolutely amazing.

‘Obviously, with the start we had, there’s a lot of pressure to keep picking ourselves up and keep going.

‘We’ve had a couple of tight games where I feel we could have actually done better than we did, but to come out of this tournament with two wins against these sort of teams is an amazing effort.’

Having previously reduced Denmark to 100 for 9 in Tuesday’s abandoned match, the Sarnians knew their opposition’s batting was brittle heading into the rearrangement and so, having been asked to bat first this time around, the objective was not to attack with all guns blazing but to post a total that could prey on Danish anxiety.

Even then, the Guernsey innings turned into something of a grind once Tom Kimber had holed out to deep square leg early on.

Lucas Barker and captain Josh Butler managed three boundaries between them during the remainder of the six-over powerplay, but the Sarnians failed to reach the rope again until the 18th over when top-scorer Ollie Newey’s late cut beat third man to his right.

Luke Le Tissier belted another four in the same over before misjudging a run shortly afterwards, but crucially in the last over Martel pulled the fourth ball for four and then went the aerial route in the same direction for six the very next ball.

Suddenly, thanks to those two lusty blows, Guernsey were buoyed as they took to the field.

They looked it, too.

Although two tough half-chances went down close to the wicket during the Danish reply, the Sarnians pouched every catch that they would expect to and their ground fielding was, on the whole, confident.

Will Peatfield struck first, trapping the skipper Hamid Mazhar Shah LBW, and in the next over a brilliant piece of work from David Hooper ran out Anique Uddin.

The dangerman was always going to be Nicolaj Laegsgaard, though.

The tall left-hander was never at his fluent best but ticked along at a run-a-ball in helping Denmark reach 62 without further loss and ahead of the required rate.

However, taking brief departure from his usual mantra of hitting hard and straight, Laegsgaard attempted to dab a Luke Le Tissier delivery down to third man, missed it and had his off stump removed.

From that moment, hope turned to expectation for the hosts.

There was still work to be done, though, and they kept chipping away with another wicket for Le Tissier as Oliver Hald holed out to Ben Ferbrache at long on before Butler took a brilliant one-handed leaping catch at extra cover for Martel to dismiss Taranjit Bharaj.

Tom Veillard, who finished with the most miserly figures, then grabbed a sharp return catch to leave Denmark 79 for 6 with four overs remaining.

When Peatfield sent one of Jino Jojo’s stumps cartwheeling in the 18th over, victory looked a long way off for the men in red, but Delawar Khan kept the Sarnians honest with a six later in the over before repeating the dose off Hooper’s penultimate over from the Blanc Bois end.

Khan was on strike from the start of the last over, too, with 10 required for victory, but Peatfield executed the perfect yorker to eliminate the left-hander’s threat.

A smart piece of fielding off his own bowling by Peatfield from the next delivery as the batsmen attempted an ambitious second then ran out Omar Hayat before the Guernsey paceman completed the campaign by conceding just two runs from the final four balls for a memorable win.