On the Wirral Riviera with temperature soaring into the 30s Phil Wood took his much changed team on the road to play bottom of the table Old Parkonians.

A familiar story where the fourth team are concerned with multiple changes to the previous weeks team.
In this week, Ethan Evans, Nathan Jones, Rowan Pennwilliams, Dylan Sanderson, Alex Waring and a first Saturday start for Charlie Saunders.

Old Parkonians stronger than in previous weeks by all accounts with players returning from injury and more availability throughout the club.

Phil won the toss and chose to bat first.

A new opening partnership this week as Shaun Marsden and Rowan strode out to the middle and quickly trudged back as both fell victim to the impressive swing of opening bowler Greg Lindop.

Phil and Dylan steadied the ship but scoring was difficult against an accurate bowling attack.
Dylan made it to 20 before being caught, Patrick Waring (12) stuck in for a while, Ethan went cheaply, caught for 4 but Phil was still there holding the innings together and passing 50 again.

Nathan had joined Phil in the middle and some great ball striking saw him finish with a quickfire 29 not out, Phil batting through for over 30 overs in the extreme heat and finishing on 64 not out.
Innings finished with the score on 153/5, less than we would have targeted at the start but definitely a defendable total.

Rowan and Nathan opened the bowling for Upton, and it wasn’t long before Nathan found the edge of the dangerous Tim Hitchell, Shaun taking the catch behind the stumps.
The old Parkonians innings was similar to Uptons, slow progress against accurate bowling.
The next wicket was one of those bizarre ways a batsman gets out, Rowan bowled one that kept low, batsman edged it, the ball hit the end of the keepers glove was pushed down into his shoe and it popped straight up to Alexa Harrison at slip. To say the batsman was unhappy was an understatement but hey… that’s cricket.

Phil and Alexa took over the bowling duties. Alexa picked up two wickets, both stumped, Phil got a late one with the target score nearly reached.
It was all over in the 37th over and Old Parkonians had secured victory by five wickets.

Same story as in previous weeks with the batting performance, we don’t perform. A score of 200 still eludes us. Fielding wise we just need to be more switched on in every game. We have fielded brilliantly in some games but we need to do it every week, making sure that easy runs are not given away and making it easy for our opponents.

There are still teams within striking distance in the league table , but we must start winning to stand any chance of remaining in the league next season.
Next week sees us with another away game versus Oxton 4s who have been struggling themselves with 4 losses from their last 5 games.
Let’s go and make it 5 from 6.