We need to pick up on poor start urges Stone

BURSCOUGH returned to winning ways on Friday when they took on St Helens Town in their latest T20 cup match.

Saturday’s league fixture against Wigan was cancelled so Jon Stone and his side were unable to capitalise on an encouraging victory.

It’s been a disappointing start to the season but Stone hopes a strong run in the cup competition will improve their performances in the league.

“We played the 20-20 game on Friday and we batted well and bowled well too,” said Stone.

“There weren’t many stand-out performances but I did fairly well with the bat and we were able to post a decent enough score early-on.

“As a team, we batted well in the end and when we got to about 140 odd, it was always going to be a competitive total.

“We kept the intensity up with the ball in hand we were able to reduce their flow of runs towards the end which gave us the win.”

Burscough were hoping to push for promotion this season but they have not won any of their first five league fixtures.

Stone hopes they can start to build in confidence following Friday’s win and push on in their double header next week.

Burscough take on Maghull in Thursday’s next round of the T20 cup competition before they face Rainford in Saturday’s crucial league test.

“We’ve had a disappointing start to the season to be honest. We’ve only won one out of our first five games this season,” said Stone.

“Hopefully we can start to pick it up from now on.

“Our fielding and our catching has let us down a lot this season.

“It’s been disappointing as in recent seasons we’ve been safe in the field. It’s just something we need to keep working on in training.

“Hopefully we can pick up another victory on Thursday.

“This cup game is quite important.

“We take some pride in that competition. We want to do well.

“The national cup competitions are a little different as we’re not expected to win but we can do well in the T20 so we want to get some success.

“We’ve got a few lads missing on Thursday.

“We’ve got two second team players coming up but they have done well for us before. Mark Rowley and Phil Jones will be selected.

“Both of them are batsmen so I’m hoping they can get some runs on the board as they’ve been performing well for the second team this year.”