Viney's heroics keep Stone on track for title (From Gazette Series)

Viney's heroics keep Stone on track for title

Readers Gloucestershire County League 1st XI - Division One Tewkesbury v Stone

STONE kept their title dreams alive with a thrilling last ball win over fellow promotion challengers Tewkesbury.

Charlie Viney was the hero for the Swanley side, taking three Tewkesbury wickets before hitting the final ball of the innings for a match-winning four.

The victory puts Stone second and they will win the league and gain promotion to the Glos/Wilts league if they can beat leaders Kingsholm tomorrow.

Skipper Ian Hall was overjoyed with the victory, especially as he had won the toss and asked Tewkesbury to bat first.

Stone started very strongly with opening bowlers Alan Sherman (12-4-34-1) and Viney taking a wicket apiece, restricting the hosts to 45-2 from 20 overs.

Following the drinks interval, John Allcoat (45) and Aaron Cherry went about rebuilding Tewkesbury's innings and added 103 for the third wicket until Hall (8-1-43-1) trapped Cherry lbw for 59.

Deeming continued where Cherry left off, hitting a quickfire 29 before being caught by Pete Lavis off the bowling of Viney (12-5-33-3).

Tewkesbury lost two more wickets in the final few overs and the innings closed on 203-6.

Stone required a good start but did not get it as Lavis was bowled by Eckersley for ten as early as the sixth over.

Worse was to follow two overs later when Eckersley struck again, this time bowling Pete Booth without scoring.

This brought Miles Palmer to the wicket and together with Darren Turl they set about repairing the early damage.

After a few overs of consolidation, runs started to flow quite steadily and Turl brought up his 50 in the 30th over closely followed by Palmer who played a scintillating drive over the infield off the bowling of Cherry.

The runs rate started to slow down when Brown was introduced into the attack and this culminated in Palmer (65) being caught when trying to go over the top once too often.

However, his partnership of 143 with Turl had put Stone into a strong position, although Turl soon went as well, bowled for an invaluable 78 by Allcoat.

A nail biting finish was in prospect and with a rate of eight an over required from the final five overs.

Jones (9) made two hefty blows and Allen also hit some vital boundaries.

At the beginning of the final over Stone needed seven runs to win.

Hall (5*) took a single from the first ball and then Allen faced a dot ball.

The third ball of the over saw Allen smash over extra cover for four but he was caught from the next ball for a priceless 16.

This brought Viney to the crease with two runs required from two deliveries.

He missed the fifth ball but from the final delivery of the innings he cut the ball high over point for four to give his side victory by the narrowest of margins, taking a hugely valuable 20 points.