All to play for as Haltwhistle keep title race interesting with victory

In a game dominated by bowlers, the crucial 46 run victory for the team furthest west closed the gap to nine points with five weeks remaining.

Haltwhistle were put into bat first on a wet day and their openers Joe Barber and Dan Parker got them off to a solid start as they cleared the rope with some lusty drives.

It was the change bowlers of Paul Brown and Aaron Rourke who enjoyed success as they ripped through the order, Rourke ending with five wickets at the cost of just 22 runs as he made light work of the middle order.

Brown starred too with the big wickets of Barber, caught behind by Sam Beedle, Ben Lloyd and Ryan Bell, while Phil Thompson was run out by Brown after three fours put him quickly on 15 runs.

The score of just over 100 was within Stocksfield’s sights but they were off to a disastrous start with Barber taking the early wickets of Jonny Tobin and David Tyrrell.

Last week’s century maker Beedle departed without making an impact when caught by Jonny Wallace off Carl Bell’s bowling, but Graeme Tolchard and Phil Bewick tried to steady the ship midway through the innings.

However, the introduction of Thompson into Halty’s attack saw the wickets start to tumble as he accounted for both batsmen, ending with four in total for just 10 runs including 11th man Ant Allen to confirm the maximum point haul.

Third placed Allendale have fired themselves back into contention in the run-in, another 12 points keeping them within three points of Haltwhistle.

Their latest success heaped more misery on bottom club Stamfordham who are now nine points off safety, picking up just two points as their nine men were hammered by their on-song hosts.

Unable to field a full team, it was over to Aamir Riaz to bring some pride to the scorecard as he batted fantastically well against some great bowling to record an unbeaten half ton.

But his teammates didn’t fare so well as Allendale’s opening bowlers Ross Laidlaw and Tim Raglan made things difficult, as did Dylan Griffin during his short spell.

Geoff Sparke and Griffin were happy to go after the runs themselves and they weren’t really troubled until Skillthorpe sent Sparke packing just before the target was hit. Laidlaw replaced him but watched on as fellow Kiwi Griffin hit the required runs to ensure Allendale kept their hat in the ring.

Hexham Leazes moved further away from Stamfordham at the bottom of the table, the five bonus points picked up in the five wicket defeat to Haydon Bridge potentially huge as the season draws to a close.

The game was much close than the winning margin suggests, Bridge winning the game in the final over in a game reduced to 38 overs per side due to the wet weather.

Leazes got off to a good start as openers Andrew Whitaker and Ben Thompson put on 50 from the opening nine overs, regularly hitting fours.

Andrew Webster carried on the good work when Whitaker departed as change bowlers Ian Watson and Mick Cunningham started to enjoy some joy.

Raji Kingman batted well and hit a rapid 50 to push Hexham towards the 200 mark, but a starring role from Robert Stephenson saw Haydon Bridge fight back at the death.

Leazes had four wickets in hand as they entered the final over, but Stephenson accounted for three of them as he helped himself to a fantastic hat-trick, unfortunate not to remove all four from the two remaining deliveries.

Neil Kendrew and Watson saw Bridge off to a fine start until Kendrew’s quick fire scoring was halted to one of the many good balls from Alex Brown.

An 80-run partnership between Watson and Jamie Taylor put Bridge in control, with captain Graeme Pigg and Richard Hines then taking over and hitting the 50 runs needed from the final eight overs to seal the victory.

A half century from Liam McWilliam steered Matfen Hall to avictory at Humshaugh .

His knock got his side close to the target of 130 set by Humshaugh’s batsmen, with the experienced pair of Eddie Scott and Ian Pilkington coming in to find the required runs for victory. He opened alongside Tom Scott and they whacked their way to 19 off the first two overs, but the loss of Scott and Max Stephens saw Matfen slip to 33-2.

McWilliam and Mark Hogg added 68 for the third wicket before the latter had to retire with a bad back, but the New Zealander continued to bat well until a flurry of wickets courtesy of Rob Forster took the score to 117-6.

But it was over to the cool heads of Scott snr and Pilkington to guide them over the line, closing the gap on seventh-placed Humshaugh to 13 points.

Humshaugh were put into bat first and got off to a disastrous start when Nick Reid was bowled by Aaron Tiffin in the opening over.

Forster was Humshaugh’s danger man but was caught behind by Alex Pearse off the returning Tom Scott, while McWilliam removed Allan Murray to leave Humshaugh at 56-3 at drinks. Andy Crawford timed the ball well on the leg side and Luke Parkinson hit several big shots but both were removed. However, Simon Turner refused to be dislodged as he denied Matfen all 12 points.

Passing 200 runs helped Benwell Hill III to victory over Newton .

They were off to flyer through openers Sarawar Kabir and Joseph Anderson, and the introduction of Darshana Thiranga accelerated the run rate considerably.

He was joined by Saud Shinwari who carried his bat, just short of his 50 when the overs ran out.

Newton were stubborn in their reply, Matt Scattergood and Andrew Jones putting together a good fifth wicket stand to deny Benwell more than 10 points even though they were 50 runs off the total.