Last Monday night Clackmannan’s Under 15 team welcomed Strathearn to the Arns. In previous encounters Clackmannan had lost twice to the Perthshire team. After losing the toss, Dan Smith and Graham Oliver went out to open the innings for Clackmannan. After the first five overs Clackmannan were flying, with the score at 47 with most of the runs coming from the bat of Smith. Due to the continuous amount of boundaries from both openers the Strathearn captain was forced to move the field back to the boundary and manoeuvring singles became easy for the two batsmen. Smith was given a life line when a difficult chance was put down by the keeper when he was in his mid thirties. During the 12th over Smith hit a beautiful pull shot to bring up his maiden half century. After the retirement of Smith the run rate was kept at a steady rate due to Oliver working singles around and hitting the odd boundary. With two overs to go Oliver also retired with his first ever half century. Scott King and Blair Campbell batted out the twenty overs, both remaining not out at the end of the innings. In their twenty overs Clackmannan posted a good score of 134 for 3 wickets.
With Elliot Milton and Jamie McCann opening the bowling, Clackmannan made a steady start. It wasn’t till the 4th over that the initial breakthrough came with McCann bowling the Strathearn opener. After that Stirling Fenton was joined by his older brother Marcus and both batsmen began to push the Strathearn innings along. With a wicket desperately needed the Clackmannan skipper turned to Blair Campbell and in his third over he had M.Fenton trapped lbw. Shortly after S.Fenton retired after scoring a determined 50. With the score at 92 after 14 overs the crowd were looking forward to a tight finish. But it wasn’t until the introduction of Graham Oliver that wickets began to tumble. With two wickets in his second over and three in his third, Oliver picked up his first ever five wicket haul. With 16 needed off the last over it was left to Scott King to bowl to complete the innings. Scott conceded only 9 runs and as a result Clackmannan won this high scoring game by 5 runs. The final scores Clackmannan U15’s 134 for 3, Strathearn 129 for 9 wickets.  A good win for the young Clackmannan team with personal bests for both Dan Smith and Graham Oliver.