Gloucestershire County League Division 2

Oldlands 172 all out beat Cranham 78 all out by 94 runs

OLDLANDS finally found their form at Abwell on Saturday, when an impressive and battling all-round team performance eventually crushed their visitors from Cranham to deliver an emphatic victory that, at tea, looked extremely unlikely.

Winning the toss and having no hesitation in batting first on a good looking pitch, the home side were soon into their stride with the impressive Kieran Price (33) leading the way, in his first appearance of the season, with some sumptuously timed shots.

However, following the dismissal of Nick Grove, the dangerous Aditya Rai then spun one sharply to bowl Price and with Dave Brookes and Brad Thomas following in quick succession, things were looking precarious for the home side.

A brief flurry and sense of promise then evaporated with the dismissal of Dave Walton (18) to leave the score at 72 for 5. However, a battling rear guard action led by the experience pair of Jason Savage (26) and Bobby Woolams (26), fought their side back into the game and with a useful contribution of 13 from Doug Walton saw a respectable all out score of 172 achieved in the final over.

The visitors were clearly confident of chasing down a total that was generally considered to be at least thirty short of a par score and following the first over dismissal of Keith Daniels, lbw to Stuart Reeves, they had few further scares in advancing the score safely to 39-1 before the introduction of home skipper Steve Pennington into the attack.

Pennington then proceeded to rip through the Cranham middle order with an impressive spell of 5-7 from his allotted nine overs, well backed up by some excellent catching, behind the stumps by Woolams, keeping as well as ever, a stunning full length forward diving effort from Thomas at point, plucking the ball inches from the turf and then a quite stunning effort in the deep from Price who, at first made superb ground to even get to the ball, and then amazingly held on to a two handed diving, tumbling effort.

With Dave Walton then into the attack to remove the dangerous Ben Pockett for thirty in his best spell of the season, Price being too hot for the tail to handle, picking up two wickets with balls that were too hostile to handle.

It was left to Savage to take the catch off the bowling of Reeves to secure a most memorable and satisfying victory.