Young England spin quintet carve up Scotland

Monty Panesar's breathtaking performance at Old Trafford in the second npower Test has obviously inspired the next generation of up and coming young England spinners by concentrating their minds to follow in his footsteps.

With the spinners to the fore, England U15 made it three wins out of three against Scotland U17 at Loughborough with a 67-run August 4 victory.

England made the most of their chance to bat first on a blamless pitch at the National Cricket Centre by scoring 230 all out in 49 overs. The left-handed opener Matthew Machan (38) got the innings off to his customary rollicking start then a high-class fifth wicket partnership of 96 runs between Zafar Ansari (68) and Chris Jones (54) set up a formidable target for the Scots to chase.

England U15's bowling attack contained five spinners and the captain, off-spinner Azeem Rafiq (1-23) opened the bowling together with his fellow left-arm orthodox spinner Jack Leach (1-26); and the experiment proved correct as they bowled well restricting the Scotland side to only 50 runs in the first 20 overs.

With the introduction of the leg-spinner Muhunthan Harinath (2-28) and the well-flighted left-arm orthodox spin of Ansari (2-38) England steadily took wickets.

This paved the way for the clever introduction of off-spinner Neil Pinner (4-41) who proceeded to bamboozle the Scotland tailenders with his flight and variation.

Scotland were bowled out for 163, a convincing 67-run win for England U15 which sees them clinch the best of four series 3-0 with one game still to play.

Scorecard:

England U15 v Scotland U17, Loughborough, August 4 2006 (40 KB)