Ciaran can't force Barns win

3:48pm Tuesday 1st July 2008

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Hale Barns 169-9 Bredbury 123-6

Match drawnDESPITE a heroic effort from Australian star Ciaran Connolly, Hale Barns could not force a win against fellow strugglers Bredbury on Saturday.

After winning the toss, Barns elected to bat first on a dry day.

The top order batting failed again when three quick wickets fell for only 27 runs and this continued with the team really struggling at 70-6 off 30 overs.

Overseas player Ciaron Connolly remained at the wicket but could only stand and watch as no one could stay at the wicket to form any meaningful partnership.

Dave Molloy helped put on 33 runs for the seventh wicket but he was extremely unlucky to find a boundary fielder to catch a shot that was clearly going for six and he was out for 15 important runs.

Skipper Dave Saddington joined Connolly and this pair scored the highest partnership of 44 runs taking the score along to 147 with Hale Barns forced to take the extra five overs to build a decent total.

Connolly was able to find the boundary in the final overs with regularity and reached his deserved century off the final ball of the innings finishing on 100 not out, a fantastic innings bearing in mind the next highest score was only 15.

Hale Barns ended up on 169-9 off 55 overs and knew this was a challenging score for Bredbury to chase.

Opening bowlers Mike Berks and Shaz Choudhry reeled off four opening maiden overs and beat the bat many times.

The breakthrough came from Choudhry bowling one of the openers and this was quickly followed up with a wicket each for the opening bowlers. Bredbury were 31-3 and struggled to 58-5 after 26 overs.

Regular bowling changes failed to take advantage of the situation and several spilled catches stopped the momentum as Hale Barns pushed for victory.

Bredbury failed to sustain any effort to go for the runs and settled for a draw finishing on 123-6 off the 45 overs. Choudhry was again the best bowler taking 3-29 off 18 overs.

Although a low points draw was disappointing it could have been a lot worse if Hale Barns had been bowled out for a lower score allowing Bredbury to take a big points haul off their fellow strugglers at the bottom of the league.