Lowerhouse v Bacup
Lowerhouse stayed top of the Lancashire League after overcoming Bacup on Sunday afternoon.
The visitors batted first and from the outset, one man dominated the innings. After the early departure of Henry Butcher for 8, Anthony Taylor was joined by Tim Farragher and the Bacup veteran made his intentions clear that he would be sticking around until the end. Taylor enjoyed a 50 partnership with him before Matt Walker knocked his stumps over on 21. Paddy Martin provided the game’s first major highlight by taking a tremendous one handed diving catch off his own bowling to dismiss the professional Hazeeb Azam for 11. Farragher continued to chalk up the runs in a steady manner but had to survive two very plausible LBW appeals when on 37 against Walker. It didn’t faze him though and made it to 50 off 95 balls. At the other end, Paddy Martin also bowled out captain Matt Thompson for a duck. Adam Highley scored a breezy 18 before Pienaar claimed his only wicket of the day. After Jack Bradford was run out for 1 to make the score 134/6 in the 43rd over, it looked like Farragher was going to run out of partners but this was at this point he upped his strike rate with boundary after boundary and completed a very gritty century in the last over off 132 balls to drag Bacup towards a highly respectable 184/7 after their 50 overs.
Lowerhouse’s response again was hampered by the loss of an early wicket. Jonny Whitehead completed his misfortune for the weekend with a 4 ball duck. He tried to pull it but hit it straight to Sam Sanderson at mid on. Skipper Charlie Cottam opened for the 2nd game running and was joined by Ben Heap who decided to play himself as there were still plenty of overs left. In the early overs of the partnership, Cottam scored the majority of the runs. From the 20 over point onwards though, Heap began to catch up as he managed to find the gaps in the field. Cottam was the first to reach his half century off 87 balls and Heap quickly followed suit by scoring his 50 off 79 balls. By this point, they has put together a 100 run partnership. After 30 overs, Cottam started to steady as Heap fired ahead with some aggressive hitting which meant that victory was in sight. He cruelly got out just 4 short of what would have been a marvellous century as he found Sanderson on the edge of the boundary. The win was confirmed just 3 balls later as Pienaar hit his only delivery of the innings to the fence. Lowerhouse finished on 187/2 with 12.2 overs remaining. Charlie Cottam finished on 71*.
MOM was Charlie Cottam for his 71*. Two games this weekend starting with a must win game on Friday at Colne in the last Twenty20 group game then in form Nelson visit the Neville Gee (Recruitment) Arena on Sunday.
