Bacup v Lowerhouse

Lowerhouse extended their lead at the top of the Lancashire League on Saturday to 10 points after another dominant display at Bacup (and other results went their way).

The hosts batted first and both openers made a solid start but a change of bowling did the trick as Henry Butcher fell on 16 to Fergus Bailey as the medium pacer took his 100th Lancashire League wicket. Tim Farragher couldn’t repeat his exploits of 2 weeks ago he could only muster 19 this time round after edging one to Ben Heap at slip off the bowling of Cobus Pienaar. Anthony Taylor was still going at a steady pace but was forced into a hasty sweep by Paddy Martin as it went up in the air and landed in the hands of Jon Finch at square leg. Adam Highley and John Syers both went without scoring as Bacup staggered to 84/5, Professional Hazeeb Azam and John Bradford managed to get the score beyond 100 but Azam, after playing some decent shots, tried to sweep a fuller ball from Paddy Martin and missed as it hit him on the back leg and was LBW on 43. It enabled Paddy to finish with figures of 4/46 off his 14 overs. Jon Finch came into the attack late on to mop up the tail (Matt Collinge for 1, Paul Burdekin for 0 and David Warren for 1) as Bacup were 133 all out with 3.5 overs remaining.

Lowerhouse’s response started perfectly as Finch hooked Azam for 6 on the very 1st ball of the innings (a total of 18 runs came off the 1st over). Finch would also benefit from an overthrow during his innings but wasn’t unable to push beyond 14. Jonny Whitehead and Ben Heap continued to keep the scoreboard progressing with excellent rotation of the strike as they were both reached the thirties at a similar time. Heap then powered ahead by taking 17 off Sam Sanderson’s third over and passed 50 shortly afterwards. His innings came to end when Henry Butcher got him LBW for an excellent 52. Pienaar hit a bright and breezy 15 before hitting it straight back to Butcher for a caught and bowled. Whitehead got the job done as he finished with 41*. Lowerhouse reached their target in just 20.2 overs with 3 wickets down, a very comprehensive win indeed.

MOM was Ben Heap for his 52.

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