Still searching for their first victory of the season the Lindow 1st team again won the toss and elected to bowl in overcast conditions at Upcast Lane.
Grover and Howarth opened the bowling and started strongly moving the ball around and finding good bounce. Grover (2 for 22) opened his account quickly bowling their opener through the gate. Runcorn's overseas player came to the crease and batted freely and found runs quickly before Walker (2 for 28) made the breakthrough, followed by an LBW to remove the danger man. Tyler was introduced into the attack clearing up the tail (3 for 12) with the visitors ending on 148 all out.
Lindow started with high expectations of a chasing down a below par score. Runcorn bowled tightly and gave nothing to the batsmen at the crease, trapping Park (8) LBW early on. Baker then came to the crease and started to build a great innings, supported by Braddock who was run out later on. Wickets fell around Baker, until Howarth (17) started to support him playing so sensible shots. Baker unfortunately played a drive to cover, ending his innings on 53 and Runcorn were able to clear up the table falling short of the target and being bowled out for 124. Credit to the discipline of the Runcorn bowlers and another frustrating game for Lindow with the win just escaping them.
Lindow 2nd XI travelled to Runcorn looking to continue their strong start to the season. On a worn track, skipper Inglis won the toss and elected to bat first. Lindow got off to a cautious start against some accurate Runcorn bowling which restricted Lindow to only 15 runs off the first 10 overs.
J. Venables was the first wicket to fall for 1 after being bowled and was soon followed by his opening partner, J. Peel, also bowled after a useful 20. A. Hume and J.Bracewell anchored the Lindow innings, scoring 26 and 39 respectively, but when both departed Lindow were 85 for 4 off 35 overs. Some late innings impetus was supplied by M. Parr, H. Mahmood and K. Ahmed as Lindow eventually mustered 145 for 6 off their allotted overs which appeared a reasonable total on a challenging wicket.
After tea, K. Ahmed made an early breakthrough removing the Runcorn opener for 2, adjudged LBW but this only brought Runcorn's captain, M. Lee, to the crease who quickly punished anything over pitched and accelerated Runcorn's score to 40 off 10 overs. Another wicket fell when Runcorn's other opener was superbly bowled by H. Mahmood but runs were still seemingly too easy to come by for the Runcorn batsmen and bowling changes were needed. They supplied the desired response with J. Peel removing Lee for 32 and A. Hume trapping the new batsmen LBW for 3.
With the score on 68 for 5, Lindow sensed a victory with Peel and Hume causing all sorts of problems for the batsmen but chances could not be taken and with some spilled catches and some tight LBW decisions not producing any results, the Runcorn batsmen grew in confidence moving the score to 120 before Hume claimed his second wicket of the day to give Lindow a slender chance of victory.
Unfortunately it was not to be and some quick fire boundaries saw Runcorn over the line to inflict Lindow's first defeat of the season.
Next weekend sees Lindow face Ashley at Upcast lane where the team will be looking to getting back to winning ways.
Member post by David Kendrick.
