Ormskirk up to second place
ORMSKIRK moved up to second in the Love Lane Liverpool Competition top flight after their 101-run win at Wigan. Skipper Gary Knight’s 90 and Sam Marsh’s unbeaten 50 helped the visitors post 260/8, before Zahir Shehzad’s 5/69 - his fourth five-for in the league - sealed the victory.
Formby lifted themselves off the bottom with an eight-wicket win over leaders Wallasey - the hosts’ second win, and the Wirral side’s second defeat.
Sumit Ruikar top-scored with an unbeaten 60 in the visitors’ 230/4, after Jamie Crawley’s 55 got the ball rolling. But the Indian left-armer was unsuccessful with the ball for once, blunted by an unbroken partnership of 150 between the left-handed Calum Turner and Ankit Kalsi.
Skipper Turner finished with 119, his fourth century of the season, while Kalsi made 67 having finally escaped the Home Office’s visa labyrinth.
Third and fourth are Northern and Leigh, two sides who were in a hurry to get out of Wirral on Saturday. New Brighton and Birkenhead Park respectively were inserted and dispatched for 60-something - Northern’s Liam Grey took 5/21 at Rake Lane, where the hosts lost their first three wickets before they’d scored, while Leigh’s Finn Hulbert did the damage at the park with 5/32.
Orrell Red Triangle’s 208/7 was just enough for a 13-run win over
Rainhill. Richard Everett’s 93 and Mark Waddington’s 53 led the way, before Dileepa Jayalath took a devilish 6/66 to ensure Tyler McGladdery’s 55 was in vain.
Newton-le-Willows were coasting in pursuit of Southport & Birkdale’s 142, when all of a sudden things started to turn upside down.
“My blood pressure has gone through the roof,” admitted captain Chris Chambers after the hosts wrapped up a nervy three-wicket win.
“We made it a bit harder than we should have done.
“But in the end, we were just happy to get over the line and get the win under our belt.”
Earlier, when Jack Morley started skipping to the crease with all the vigour and confidence of a man who’d taken wickets for Lancashire earlier in the week, the visitors hadn’t looked likely to take this one to the wire.