We were lacking fight fumes Firth
MI Dental Liverpool Competition: First Division: Sefton Park (25pts) 78-6 beat Southport and Birkdale (3pts) 77 by four wickets
PERHAPS the only thing to salvage from S&B’s abysmal defeat to Sefton Park on Saturday was that it occurred in May and might therefore serve as a grim warning for the rest of the season.
For the second time in eight days Chris Firth’s team were beaten fair and square. Yoke the batting performances together for the last two Saturdays and their total is 155-20.
Even Bob Willis might be struggling for adjectives to describe it all.
S&B’s failures would be explicable and excusable if it was the younger members of the side who were struggling. But on Saturday experienced batsmen failed too, either through mis- judgements like being bowled when shouldering arms or through errors like attempting to cut slow left-armers early in their innings.
And there might still be limited absolution available if Saturday’s pitch was excessively difficult. But conditions were simply bowler-friendly and the young Sefton Park seamers who inflicted most of the early damage swung the ball through the air rather than relying on any help from the wicket.
It didn’t turn either. But Robbie Houghton still took three wickets for next to nothing on it.
The former S&B cricketers watching the game on Saturday know full well that young players need to be given time to get used to first-team cricket.
But the annoying thing was that Chris Brownlow, one of the younger members of the side, played far and away the best innings.
His 48 offered an example of how to cope with such condi- tions. If someone had stuck around with Brownlow, S&B might have mustered 120 runs, which may well have been all they needed. But when nine batsmen manage a grand total of 17 runs between them, a total of 120 is a cricketing Kangchenjunga.
Even as it was, Sefton Park were reduced to 30-4 before Daniel Kelly played the game’s second distinguished innings. And he was dropped twice, albeit they were tough chances, before the game was anything like settled.
To his credit, Chris Firth did not attempt to hide his disappointment after the game, nor did he excuse himself from a measure of blame.
“For us to be bowled out for less than 80 for the second successive week was very disappointing and we were poor”, he said.
“We didn’t show enough fight in the way we went about things and we didn’t show enough application.
“Even 100, I suspect, might have won us the game.
“When someone’s batting well, you need someone to stick around and we haven’t had people to do that in the last two weeks.
“Probably I should have bowled first on that wicket but I still think that a score of 150-160 would have been enough in the conditions and we should have been perfectly capable of getting that sort of total”.
Southport and Birkdale’s second team also lost to Sefton Park on Saturday but they put up rather more of a fight with the bat than their senior colleagues and were eventually defeated by a spectacular century by the home skipper, Ritchie Conlan.
Dave Aston, a man who always sells his wicket dearly, made 48 in S&B’s 160-8 declared in 45 overs and had their hosts in trouble before Conlan decided the match with an innings of 107 not out which secured a three-wicket victory for his side. Craig Todd took 4-42 for S&B.