Bramhall face scrap for survival after loss to dominant Chester

and the visitors stumbled along to 243 before losing their last wicket with 2 balls of the innings to go.

At tea, Bramhall were under no illusions that their total was a winning one – particularly on a drying outfield – but felt confident that their talented bowling attack would put them in with a shout.

As Chester’s openers tried to assert their authority on the Bramhall seamers, Lamb struck with a good ball to remove the dangerous Moore LBW for 15.

The Beavers sensed blood when Chester’s number 3 struggled to settle, but a couple of close LBW shouts were turned down and the away side started to lose a little momentum as the wicket looked to ease.

The score had moved past 100 when the number three was finally dismissed when Wood took a sharp catch at mid-wicket off Matt Higginbottom.

This bought Cheshire skipper Lee Dixon to the middle, joining Warren Goodwin, and his immediate positivity slowly began to take the game away. Bramhall’s bowlers were doing very little wrong, but the Chester batters looked comfortable as they picked their gaps with regularity.

The game drew to a relatively swift close, with 10 overs to spare, as Goodwin reached an excellent hundred and Dixon a purposeful 70 to see the hosts home by 8 wickets.

Bramhall are still not quite able to pull all facets of their game together, whereas Chester’s batting looked strong enough to chase down any total.

They must now be favourites to lift the trophy, while Bramhall now have a scrap for survival – with the game at home to Cheadle next Saturday now taking on added significance. 2nd BRAMHALL had the better of a largely uninspiring draw, as Urmston adopted a very defensive approach, never appearing to make any effort to chase down the Bramhall score.

After the heavy rain of the previous days, the ground at Bramhall was in a far better condition than either team could believe.

Despite the pitch having some damp patches, it played well throughout, with only a small number of deliveries misbehaving.

Without that knowledge, however, it was no surprise that, having lost the toss again, Bramhall were asked to bat first. The youthful opening pair of Ruaridh Patel and Alex Hunt got the innings off to a steady start, putting on 38 before Alex was caught off one of the few balls that lifted unexpectedly. Danny Woodside didn’t last long, and when Ruaridh was out not long after, Bramhall were under the cosh. However Ed Daber and Adam Siddall betted well together, with each of them going on to score 50s. Sadly the rest of the Bramhall betting failed to build on their efforts, with Wazir Ahmed running through the tail to end up with 5-33, leaving the Beavers all out for 184 in the last over of their innings.

Bramhall’s opening bowlers, Rupes Kitzinger and Adam Siddall, kept things tight as Urmston showed little interest in asserting themselves. A

run rate of less than 2 runs an over continued for most of the innings as Bramhall tried to take wickets.

As the number of close fielders increased, the scoring rate increased, but not by much.

Josh Epsley, with 38 not out, showed good application and one or two aggressive shots, and Ritesh Shetty, with 27, batted more positively than the majority of his teammates. Rupes Kitzinger ended up taking 4 for 33 off 15 overs, but the pitch behaved well and Urmston ended up on 131-7 from their allotted 50 overs.

Overall a disappointing game, but Bramhall will be looking to return to winning ways against Cheadle next weekend.