Challenge on as Guernsey get ready for the Netherlands

The Island squad go up against the Challengers – an initiative that nurtures talent nestled between the National Counties Association and first-class cricket – in the inaugural Cross Channel Challenge three-match series.

With England U19 and county second XI players among the visiting party, it promises to provide the stiffest examination the Sarnians will face on home soil this season, less than a fortnight before they head to the Netherlands.

Guernsey captain Ollie Nightingale is looking forward to, as he puts it, ‘more tough cricket’.

‘These guys have been brought over with the expectation that they’re on a par, or almost as good as, the guys that we’re going to be playing out in Holland, so three tough games,’ he said.

‘We’ve got a bit of squad rotation for various reasons – obviously everyone’s had to commit a lot of holiday to a lot of different cricket this summer already – so a bit of mixing and matching, but hopefully get three good performances and take some confidence away with us.’

The Greens are coming off the back of the Inter-Insular Cup T20I Series in Jersey, which ultimately ended in a narrow 2-1 defeat, but from which the squad took a lot of positives that Nightingale believes can help the team in the Netherlands when Jersey will be one of their opponents, along with Scotland, Italy and the host nation.

‘If you take each of the individual performances, I think they’re pretty strong,’ was his assessment of the Inter-Insular Cup.

‘I think we probably played 70% better cricket over the weekend, and we’ve won one game, so hopefully next time we play them out in Holland, go as well again and hopefully get the result.

‘I think the belief probably grew as the weekend went on. After the first night maybe we thought, “oh, we are slightly better, we’re getting there”, and then by the end of the weekend we probably thought, “oh, we’re actually better than this lot this weekend”.

‘We’re definitely tracking in the right direction. I think the guys believe it a lot more now, and hopefully we can take that forward because we’re competing and I guess two or three years ago we weren’t competing.

‘So we’ve come a long way, and now we probably believe we can beat them whenever we play them.’

Game one of the Cross Channel Challenge starts at 4pm today at the KGV, with games two and three tomorrow at 1.30pm and 5.30pm.

Challengers squad

Daniel Lincoln (captain), Rhys Lewis, Cameron Hemp, Ross Whitfield, Reeve Evitts, Alex Eckland, George Tait, Freddie Fallows, Tom Davis, Samuel Keeling Wright, Alex Russell, Charlie Dunnett.