Devon Cricket Board - Premier news round-up

TORQUAY aren’t out of the Premier Division relegation picture just yet after losing by 37 runs at Cornwood in a rain-affected match.

Beating Bovey Tracey last time out helped distance Torquay from the bottom two, but there is one stumbling block left.

Torquay still have to play second-bottom Bradninch on the penultimate Saturday of the season and defeat them could suck them into the mire.

A win over bottom side Budleigh Salterton this

Cornwood made 240 for five in their full allocation of 50 overs – opener Chris Parker (50) and Asif Raza (540 making half centuries.

Ryan Rickard missed out at the top of the order – he was out for four – but Parker and Mark Horwell (47) added 80 for the second wicket.

Parker kept going with Asif to put on 31 them Matt Skeemer chipped in with 35 and Hall had a bright 28 off 24 balls in the last eight overs.

Pick of the bowlers for Torquay with two for 40 was spinner Dan Wightman. Ben Passenger had two for 48 while Jack Richardson had one for 29 from 10 tidy overs.

Torquay soon got behind the run rate as Raza (1-12) and Skeemer (2-17) made life hard for them.

Then the rain came not once but twice and when it lifted the reduced target was 131 to win in 27 overs.

Torquay needed someone to put bat to ball, but once Justin Yau went for 22 on 73 for four with five and a half overs to go the game was up.

Torquay have been on the wrong end of the weather more than once this season, quite an achievement in the driest summer for a decade.

Matt Thompson, Torquay’s vice-captain, said the rain breaks didn’t help – and neither did some slip-shod fielding.

“It seems that whenever there is rain around it, the situation doesn't favour us,” said Thompson.

“We knew there was a shower due midway through the afternoon, but with the forecast then clear we set our sights on reaching the reduced target.”

“What we didn’t expect was another heavy downpour out of the blue, which effectively lost us the game.

“That said our bowling wasn't good enough when it really mattered and had we taken out chances - we dropped Raza on none - it would have been a different story.

“The fact of the matter is that we're now right in the thick of it and must pull our socks up for two cup finals against Budleigh and Bradninch in the coming weeks.”

NORTH Devon’s stand-in captain Rob Ayre said the 38-run win over Bradninch was harder work than it looked on paper.

Somerset’s Craig Overton hit 172 and Dan Bowser showed he his fit again after injury with 58 in a North Devon total of 318 for eight.

There were three wickets for Dan Hardy and two each for Jackson Thompson and Chris Acton.

Hardy top scored with 88 for Bradninch who, thanks to chip-ins from James Street (44), Tim Piper (23) and Greg Maher (32) made 280 for nine.

Victory leaves North Devon fourth in the table, 52 points behind leaders Exmouth with 66 to play for an aiming for one of the minor placings at best.

Ayre, filling in for the unavailable Matt Dart for a couple of games, said Bradninch refused to give up and were never far enough behind for North Devon to feel comfortable.

“Bradnnch had six chance to get Craig out before he reached 172 – and if they had taken any of them it would have been a different game,” said Ayre.

“You don’t get away with that against a player of Craig’s quality and with Dan Boswer at the other end we made Bradninch pay a high price.

“You never know what’s a good total batting first at Bradninch because it is a quick-scoring ground and they have some players who can get on with it.

“Jackson Thompson teed off right from the start and we were glad to get him out for 17.

“Tim Piper likes to get on with it, so does Dan Hardy, and both of them kept coming at us.

“Bradninch are fighting for their lives right now and really gave it a good go.

“We managed to keep them just behind the asking rate long enough to leave them too much to do, but it was closer than it looked for a long time .”

North Devon are back at Instow this Saturday for an appointment with Cornwood.

BRADNINCH have a crunch game against Torquay this Saturday which is likely to determine their fate this season.

Win it and the Kensham Park outfit have a fighting chance of getting out of the Premier Two bottom two before it’s too late.

Lose and it is hard to see how Bradninch can close the 19 point gap between them and safety in the two games left.

Bradninch ran into title outsiders North Devon last Saturday and came off second best by 38 runs.

North Devon were without Zimbabwean star Glenn Querl – he was at a wedding – but had a ready-made replacement in Somerset’s Craig Overton.

Overton butchered the Bradninch attack for 172 off 135 balls, which included 15 fours and 11 sixes, in a total of 318 for eight.

Bradninch dropped Overton a handful of times – North Devon captain Rob Ayre reckoned the final tally was six – and paid the price.

After Jackson Thompson (2-44) bowled Barney Huxtable in the third over, a stand of 179 between Overton and Dan Bowser (58) got North Devon going.

Overton was last man out with two balls to go having shared in a seventh-wicket stand of 46 added in 17 balls with Matt Westaway (9).

Bradninch had to have a go at chasing down the total as they needed the batting bonus points if nothing else.

North Devon feared another assault from Thompson – who scored a Premier double hundred earlier in the season – and were glad to see him go for 17 of the first 18 on the board.

James Street (44) and Tim Piper (23) made a 66-run dent in the deficit, then Dan Hardy got on with it.

Hardy’s 88 off 75 balls with 10 fours and a couple of sixes had North Devon rattled for a while.

Matt Jarrett and Greg Maher (32) gave Hardy support, but eight overs out with 101 needed to win he was prised out by Tom Allin (2-53).

Maher and Matt Vercoe-Curtis (20) gave it their best shot, but there weren’t enough overs left to get closer than 280 for nine.

BOVEY Tracey couldn’t have done much more to stay close behind Exmouth at the top of the Premier table as they defeated bottom side Budleigh Salterton by seven wickets.

Eliot Rice and Bob Dawson both made half centuries as Budleigh reached 248 for nine in their 50 overs.

Dawson and James Burke (42) put on 101 for the first wicket and total was topped up further by Jack Dart (24) and Rice notching 65 for the fourth,

Peter Bradley had four for 46 and there were two wickets each for Neil Hancock and Ryan Bougourd.

Bovey only had two balls at last pair Matt Plowman and Joel Murphy, but couldn’t shift either of them and dropped a bowling bonus point.

Sam Wyatt-Haines slammed the Budleight bowling for 90 off 98 balls with 14 fours and a six as the home set went off in hot pursuit.

Wyatt-Haines and Bradley (71) made a 183-run dent in the target and it was a straightforward job for Damian Bourke (23) and Matt Golding (34) to whittle away the rest.

Bovey are 13 points behind Exmouth at the top of the table with a big meeting between them on the Maer this Saturday,

Budleigh are 35 points adrift of safety at the bottom and unless the beat Torquay this Saturday will be playing A Division cricket again next season for the first time since 2003.

PLYMOUTH’S patchy form continued when they went down by seven runs against visiting Exmouth after a rain break interrupted their chase.

Exmouth recovered from 17 for five after an early duffing up from Dave Burke (3-19) and Rob Bennett (2-28) to make 187 for eight in the full quota of 50 overs.

Trevor Anning made 30 – his stand of 62 with Andy Buzza (24) started the fightback – then Lawrence Greenway (50) and Mark Orchard (36no) put on 90 before Greenway fell to Henry Bennett’s last ball of the innings.

“We bowled fantastically at the start - to have that line up 17-5 you have to,” said Plymouth captain Matt Hooper.

“Exmouth did well to get to 190. We would have taken that at the start, but we would have liked it to have been a little less after the position they were in.”

The city side ran into trouble either side of the halfway stage when they stumbled from 51 for three to 85 for seven.

Callum Whittaker made 27 of the first 46 on the board and Jake Luffman had 21 when he was sixth out. Rob Bennett went first ball.

Despite a brave effort from the lower order batters, a revised target of 17 to win from the last two overs and 12 off the final one proved too tall an order.

Henry Bennett (26) and Hooper (27no) got Plymouth close and Burke (27) nudged them closer.

Had Burke still been there going into the final over – Anning got rid of him in the one before –they may have been a different outcome.

Losing four overs to rain was probably Plymouth’s undoing, as skipper Hooper readily acknowledged.

“We were unfortunate not to win against Exmouth as we ran them really close,” said Hooper.

“We felt a little hard done by with the weather as we were creating a nice little position for ourselves.

“I thought we batted well. We looked to get some rough decisions, but we kept ourselves in it.

“We were aiming for 30 off the last six overs and that was where we were. Then we came off in very light rain and it was 17 off two overs.”