Incredibly close - but no win for either side
Liverpool Gin Liverpool Competition: ECB Premier League: Southport and Birkdale (7pts), 249 for five declared, drew with Ainsdale (7pts) 249-5
IT was an “if only” game. It was one of those contests after which most of the 22 players sit sweating in the dressing room wondering if they could have done a little more to secure a win.
It was one of those matches which leave the neutrals thinking what a wonderful game cricket is and the participants reckoning that tightrope walking in a high wind would be less stressful.
Just less than eight months after they had managed to draw their First Division game with both scores and wickets lost level, Ainsdale and Southport & Birkdale did it again, this time with both teams having made 249-5. The only difference between the sides was that S&B declared and that Ainsdale faced 5.4 overs more than their opponents.
Not that such considerations mattered very much.
When it was all done, the gloom-mongers could point to the fact that neither side had yet a won a match in the ECB Premier League and that relegation from the top tier of the Liverpool Gin Liverpool Competition beckoned if things carry on like this.
The optimists might point to the three outstanding centuries in the match, the two incisions made by Ainsdale’s Malcolm Swift in the first over of the game and the fine containing bowling of S&B’s spinners at a time when the home professional Faiz Fazal seemed about to cut loose.
The latter view is the more tempting. League tables are only one way of judging a season although neither Chris Firth nor the Ainsdale skipper, Andy Barlow might agree.
Certainly there was no denying the quality of S&B’s batting after Swift had removed both Ashley MacDonald and Chris Brownlow, both falling to catches behind the wicket by Tom Wainwright.
First Tearan Gleeson and Bradley Yates steadied the ship and then Yates and Adam Phillips shared a partnership of 182 runs for the fourth wicket, Yates playing a superbly judged second-fiddle role while Phillips blew his own trumpet and blasted the ball to all parts, hitting 15 fours and three sixes.
Both batsmen took advantage of what was a flat Liverpool Road pitch and were dismissed within 11 runs of each other. Soon after their departures, a little rain arrived, prompting Firth’s declaration.
The second half of the game was dominated by a century which, if anything, was better than the ones scored by the S&B batsmen.
Ainsdale’s hopes of prospering in the top division probably rest on the runs scored by their Pakistani opener, Faiz Fazal, and on Saturday he played one of his finer innings, making 128 off 175 balls and hitting 15 fours before he was fifth out, caught at backward point by Andy Warhurst off Firth’s bowling.
That left Ainsdale needing nine runs off nine balls.
They managed only eight and were probably disappointed given that they had been 182 for one with both Fazal and Barlow going well.
But Justin Labuschagne took two wickets in a good second spell while Firth and Chris Cunningham stuck to their disciplines and never conceded the welter of boundaries that would have put Ainsdale well ahead of the run rate.
When it was done, the players shook hands and took comfort from the fact that seven points is rather more than either side has managed from most of their Premier League games this season.
By themselves such returns will not lead to survival but they represented fair rewards from a fine game. As they sank their exotic ciders, the players were probably entitled to think that there were worse ways to spend a Saturday.
Because the county match is taking place at Trafalgar Road this weekend neither of S&B’s two senior teams will be in action on Saturday.