Before any of our matches were played, the club’s stalwart supporter and photographer Graham Gaw took this year’s team photos, available to view here. Please remember to ‘buy him a coffee’ using the link on his website to show your appreciation for his excellent and dedicated work with the camera throughout the year.

Across our Saturday teams, we registered a win, two losses and a tie. Sadly, for our 1st XI, they couldn’t overcome Meigle, so they are now certain to be relegated at the end of the season, no matter what happens results-wise in the next two weeks. The loss of basically all of our top-order at the start of the season, for a variety of reasons, including Oli being away on Scotland duty for the first half, proved too big a hole to fill in a very competitive division, where the three teams above us have each beaten a top three team at some point and even the top-of-the-table teams have lost at least three times. Our winning performances against Championship teams in the Masterton in June, when we couldn’t buy a win in the EPL, provide some hope that we can bounce back quickly next year, as we did the last time that we were relegated in 2006, winning the Championship the following year and immediately re-gaining our EPL status.

Meigle won the toss at Myreside and opted to bat first in a game just as important to them as it was to us, as they and Arbroath were the only two teams that we could theoretically have overhauled and forced into the relegation spot. Their innings started slowly with opening bat Harjeet Brar falling for 16 at the end of the tenth over with the score on 33/1. A number of significant partnerships followed (95, 70 and 79 runs for the next three wickets) with the EPL’s leading run-scorer Raju Gayashan extending his lead with a destructive knock of 114* off just 59 balls, his second-best score of the season (after 119* at Forthill). Despite good work behind the stumps by professional Bismillah Khan (taking a catch and three stumpings, involved in all the wickets), we let a number of chances go down that allowed Meigle to reach a challenging 301/4 from their 50 overs.

Our top order each showed promise but couldn’t build the platform we needed, with the score at 68/3 at the start of the fourteenth over. Ben Jones and Tom Wylie put on a steadying 103-run partnership in 22 overs for the fourth wicket with Tom falling on 41. Although our score was ahead of Meigle’s at the same stage, the required run-rate was now close to 9 per over which proved too great an ask. Our later batters had to take risks, but this provided openings for the Meigle bowlers. Ben Jones made an excellent 106, his first in the EPL and for the club. Nevertheless, we fell 39 runs short of Meigle’s total with two overs unused.

The 2nd XI visited Lewisvale Park to face Musselburgh. Musselburgh won the toss and asked us to bat. After losing Evan Howe early, Dan Kirk and Kevin Singh ground out a twelve over partnership of 41, reflecting the slow outfield and disciplined spin bowling from Musselburgh. Dan couldn’t mask his frustration on being caught for 37. The next partnership of note was for the fifth wicket, between George Baltzer (also making 37) and Rob Loomes, adding 46 and seeing the start of an acceleration in our scoring tempo. Having reached only 85 runs after 30 overs, we added 119 in the remaining 15 overs, thanks to Rob’s 57 off 59 (his first half-century of the season) as well as good striking from the tail. We finished on 204/9, a higher total than Musselburgh have managed all season, despite their opener Vignesh Devaraj being the division’s highest scorer, with an impressive 608 runs in his 14 prior matches this season. With Devaraj clearly being a key player, there was delight when Ross Tait bowled him for just 2 runs in the first over. Musselburgh ground out runs slightly quicker than we had initially managed but couldn’t find the extra gear to match our late acceleration and never troubled the required rate, falling 43 runs short on 161/8. This result should secure our berth in Division 1 for next season as we will now definitely finish seventh or better, whatever next week’s result at Myreside against bottom-of-the-table Clackmannan County.

A tie against Stewart’s Melville 3s on the Inverleith arti assured our 3rd XI of safety too. SM asked us to bat and our top three made a good start, including Laurie Cox (25) and Alasdair Macdonell (33). The standout partnership of the day was an exceptional 116 for the sixth wicket from Jamie Stevenson (63 off 59 balls including 9 fours and a six) and Ben Hogg (50* off 50 including 7 fours and a six), both of whom comfortably hit their top scores of the season. This went a long way to securing a very good 215/6 from our 40 overs. We secured early wickets, Caylin taking both openers in his first spell to have SM 44/2. Mohammed Fasihullah and Sasi Sukumar built a good 76-run partnership, broken by Louis Ferguson in an important spell, taking 3 wickets in his five overs (SM 139/5 at the start of the 30th over, about 15 runs ahead of our total at the same point). Jaideep, Finlay Blackstock and Caylin kept things pretty tight in the final ten overs, pegging SM back to exactly our score, though for two more wickets, finishing the match in an unusual tie on 215.

The 4th XI hosted Livingston’s 4s at Craiglockhart. David Evans (14) and Toby Tucker (40) put on a good 49-run partnership, with John Boothman supporting Toby well too. Chris Cox and Simon Israel both made double figures but couldn’t match the 31 extras that Livingston offered up (to be fair, we gave them 34 too). We were bowled out a ball short of the 40 overs for 126. Toby also secured the best bowling figures of the day with 3/25 off his 8 overs. A 14-over, 68-run partnership between Stuart Lang and Mark Collings, eventually broken by Aryaman Apte (1/17 off 7 overs) powered Livi most of the way to their target, which they reached with a little more than six overs to spare and five wickets in hand.