Glenn Bully's Bridge

Westhoughton were invited to bat and didn’t get off to the best start with Matt Trow unluckily given out caught behind in the 3rd over.Martin Hodgkiss joined Glenn Bullock at the wicket and they put on a 100+ partnership before getting caught in the deep for 43.Runi went shortly after mistiming a cut to point which brought Kai Hodgkiss to the wicket.Glenn reached his second ton of the season setting the platform for Westhoughtons highest total so far this campaign.Kai offered good support to Glenn then got bowled for 35 and JP got run out shortly after following a mix up which resulted with both batsmen at one end then a chase to the other of Keystone Cops proportions before demolishing everything in his path;female bowler included.The boundary fest from the middle order batsmen never materialised as wickets fell at regular intervals with Glenn posting a brilliant 115 before the exhaustion of batting 40+overs in the sunshine took its toll.Westhoughtons innings closed on 265-8 after the allotted 50 overs.

Astley Bridge’s response got off to a steady start before Dan Higham got a breakthrough bowling the opening batsman.Simon Ashcroft struggled to find his line and length at the other end getting picked off for the occasional boundary.With the score at 40odd for 1 wicket off 10 overs a double bowling change brought Wasim Nawab and Martin Hodgkiss into the attack,Runi having to rotate bowlers due to the competition rules of max 10overs per bowler.With Westhoughton protecting the boundaries the no3 batsmen tried for a 2 but an excellent throw from Dan Higham in the deep ran out the batsman.Hodgy thought he had Ade Cooper trapped infront shortly after with a full delivery hitting the batsman just above the boot. To everyone’s astonishment the umpire turned down the appeal but this was quickly cleared up as JP explained the decision
”the ball was clearly passing underneath the stumps!” Fortunately the batsman didn’t get a reprieve as he nicked off to JP immediately afterwards for 34.The next 2 batsmen put on a good partnership taking the score to 150+.With Wasim getting some tap Runi brought Charlie Honour into the attack whilst Hodgy finished his 10 over spell being replaced by Dan Higham.Finally Charlie made the breakthrough having the no 5 batsman bowled for 30odd,keeper Jack Wainman was then caught in the deep by Simon Ashcroft for 60+ and then Matt Farnworth was caught on the cover boundary by Kai who atoned for an earlier drop off Hodgy’s bowling.Bridge then collapsed with wickets tumbling as Dan Higham(3 wickets) and Kai Hodgkiss (2 wickets) wrapped up the Bridge tail some 50 or so runs short.

Westhoughton progress to round 2 where they travel to Bradshaw on Sunday 16th June.