Report and photos: Peter Rogan

In baking hot sunshine Birkenhead won the toss and elected to field.

The decision to put Ormskirk into bat looked to be a good one as the early Ormskirk batting failed with only George Politis (34) offering any stern resistance to the bowling attack.

Wickets fell regularly with Alex Rankin (13), Gary Knight (2), Rob Rankin (11) and Harvey Rankin (9) all finding their ways back to the pavilion to leave the score on 80-5.

Some stability was returned when James Bone came to the crease to contribute to a 6th wicket partnership of 43 runs with James Illingworth (14). Bone went on to score 44 before he lost his wicket being caught off the bowling of Bailey Jones.

With the score on 139-7 it was now left to the tail-end batsmen to respond and they did so with Scott Lees taking the lead. The last three wickets put on 70 runs with Scott Lees (37), Zahir Shehzad (10), Martyn Farrell (4*) and Jamie Barnes (18*).

The innings was declared on 209-9 off 55 overs to give the Ormskirk bowlers a respectable total to defend which mid-way through the innings seemed highly unlikely although the batting conditions were excellent.

The Birkenhead openers Matty Langford and Mark Rowland made a good start putting on 73 runs for the first wicket which fell when Langford (45) was caught behind by Gary Knight off the bowling of Jamie Barnes.

A second partnership of 32 was put on for the second wicket before Rowland (51) became Knight’s second catching victim off the bowling of Martyn Farrell to leave the score on 105-2.

Things started to look evenly balanced when three more wickets fell cheaply with Martyn Farrell grabbing the wickets of Chris Foran ((16) and Tom Foster (11) and Zahir Shehdaz having Jack Dixon (15) caught by Scott Lees.

From then on, however, it was all down-hill for the Ormskirk bowlers with the visitors’ batsmen taking a dominant role.

In the 45th over it was all over with Steve Hird (34*) and Sam Bedworth (28*) securing victory by a margin of 5 wickets.

It was an overall disappointing performance by the Ormskirk team that yielded only 6 points in the chase to catch Wallasey at the top of the League. It was made more painful in that Wallasey enjoyed a handsome win over Wigan yielding them maximum points and making the task of bridging the gap of 68 points, with only 5 games to play, extremely difficult.

Stranger things have happened, however, and winning the League remains the ultimate aim.