Report and photo: Peter Rogan

With several players unavailable, Ian Robinson, who this season has played mainly in Sunday fixtures only, and the Griffiths bothers, Owen and Gavin, came into the team for Saturday's game.

Ormskirk won the toss and elected to bat; Andy Baybutt and Ian Robinson opened the innings and made a solid start. They put on 47 runs for the first wicket which went down when Robinson (27) was caught off the bowling of Chris Liptrot. He was replaced by Alex Rankin.

The score progressed to 67 when Rankin (9) fell to a catch behind by Neil Williams off the bowling of Liptrot.

The loss of the second wicket brought Owen Griffiths into the fray to join Baybutt. From the outset, this partnership looked confident and so it proved to be as the score moved along steadily, with Baybutt back to his old self and Griffiths giving no indication that this was his first game in the Premier League this season. With the score on 152 the partnership was broken when Baybutt (71) was caught by Will Purser off the bowling of Bharat Tripathi. He had played well and Ormskirk supporters were glad to see him back in the runs in Premier League games. The loss of his wicket brought in Gary Knight.

Another 20 runs were added before Owen Griffiths (52) lost his wicket, but not before he had deservedly reached his half-century. On the loss of the 4th wicket, Gary Knight was joined by Luke Platt (0), who was caught off the first delivery he received. That was the 5th wicket down with 172 runs on the board.

To gain maximum batting points, and set Bootle a challenging total to chase, Ormskirk needed to get to 220 and, with Gary Knight scoring 29, Tom Hartley (17), Gavin Griffiths (7*) and Ryan Maddock (9*), that is what they did. The innings was declared on 223 -7 off 54 overs.

Just as the innings ended the forecast rain came down and play was held up for just under an hour to make the task of achieving a winning result much more difficult for both sides.

When play did start again, things could not have got off to a better start for Ormskirk when Gavin Griffiths bowled Bootle’s star opening batsman Vishal Tripathi (0).

The score progressed to 39-1 when the rain reappeared and 20 more minutes were lost to make a draw the most likely result and so it turned out to be.

Play continued and 4 more wickets were taken to put Ormskirk in the ascendency but when time was up Bootle were 106-5 and the match was drawn.

It was all very frustrating as players and supporters made for home asking the question, “Why did the break in the glorious summer weather have to come on a Saturday afternoon?”