SOUTHPORT & BIRKDALE

Liverpool Gin Liverpool Competition: ECB Premier League: Rainhill

(25pts), 147, beat Southport and Birkdale (7pts), 139 all out, by eight runs

HIGH summer has been a season of rather low spirits at Trafalgar Road. Both first and second teams have been battling against relegation but that is hardly a new situation and it has, in any case, been put in its proper perspective by the passing of two of Southport & Birkdale’s most familiar former players.

In early August the death of Paul Butler was announced and then on

Saturday morning news of the passing of Geoff Bridge reached S&B.

And so players who were far too young to know Geoff in his marvellous pomp observed a minute’s silence and wore black armbands.

It was typically respectful behaviour at a club which has always honoured its former cricketers.

Yet for those of a different vintage the recollections are inevitably more intimate and more poignant. Older members will remember a seam bowler of high skill and an instinctively excellent first-team captain who led the team to the Liverpool Competition title in 1975 before later serving as a conscientious ground chairman in an era when Lancashire’s annual visits to Southport were almost taken for granted.

They will also look back on a skipper of independent mind and endearing eccentricity.

For example, Geoff did not always regard a university education as an asset for a young cricketer.

More than a few players with degrees were dismissed as “educated pillocks” once it was clear they had no common sense to go with their certificates.

But Geoff had a good eye for genuine ability and is remembered with great fondness.

Everyone at Trafalgar Road sends their sympathy to his daughters, Lindsey and Diane.

Quite what Bridge would have made of S&B’s performance on Saturday hardly requires great debate.

He might have admired the way Chris Firth and Chris Cunningham limited Rainhill to 147 all out in a game which was played on the county wicket.

He would have been delighted by the dismissal of the dangerous Anuj Dal, who was caught at slip by Adam Phillips off Isaac Lea for only eight, but then frustrated by the eighthwicket partnership between Reece Davies and Biley Banerjee which was almost entirely responsible for Rainhill reaching their moderate total.

The limitations of that target were made perfectly evident by S&B’s toporder batsmen and when the score reached 117 for two, Firth’s team had a priceless victory in their grasp.

But the dismissals of Brad Yates and Adam Phillips within three runs of each other caused panic to set in among inexperienced batsmen and the slow left-armer, Qaiser Ashraf, took four of the last six wickets to fall, three of them stumpings.

S&B lost their last eight wickets for 22 runs and now go to Ormskirk on Saturday ten points clear of eleventhplaced Colwyn Bay and 13 ahead of Lytham.

Plainly they are not safe from relegation, a concept unknown to Geoff Bridge in his playing days.

On the other hand, he saw a few batting collapses and, like his successors, was pungent in his criticism of them.

“Plus ca change,” as an educated pillock might observe.

Southport &Birkdale’s second team competed well in their game against Liverpool on Saturday but still lost by four wickets are are now equal on points with tenth-placed Colwyn Bay near the bottom of the Premier League.

Adam Galley made 51 and Dave Aston 49 in S&B’s 175 for eight declared but the Aigburth batsmen overhauled that score in 36.2 overs.