CHESTER BROUGHTON HALL BEAT SPANISH ACADEMY

Chester Broughton Hall Cricket Club, the winners of the ECB National T20 competition found their form and defeated the Spanish Academy side to effectively end the Spaniards hopes of playing in the final against a Mike Gatting Legends XI.

The Cheshire based club won the toss and elected to bat. Skipper Lee Dixon, who blasted 87 in the ECB Final at Northants CC opened and hit 24 in double quick time as the visitors raced to 50 for the loss of just one wicket after four overs.

This set the tone for the innings and this continued throughout the 20 overs as the Chester side piled on the runs for a final total of 208 for 5.

Mark Rowland was unbeaten at the end on 99 not out and Jordan Clark supported him with a quick fire 32 before being well caught in the deep by Vikash Singh off the bowling of Ravi Panchal. Clark is best remembered for being only the fifth player to score sixes in the professional game when hitting the maximum for Lancashire’s second XI against Yorkshire’s second XI at Scarborough in April 2013.

In contrast, the Academy struggled to score quickly early on in their innings and as a result found it difficult to chase down a total that required a run rate of 10 runs an over from ball one. Yasir Ali, Christian Munoz-Mills and Tanveer Iqbal all contributed with useful knocks but the Academy innings finally ended on 161 for 4, some 42 runs shy of the Chester Broughton Hall score.

The Academy’s final game tomorrow is another tough encounter, against Waltham CC who are currently four wins out of four, and heavy favourites to play the Legends in Sunday’s final.