Frustration For 1st & 3rd Teams Whilst 2nd Team Fall Short Again

Paul Edwards for The Southport Visiter

The suggestion that Southport and Birkdale had dominated an enthralling game of cricket would probably have been lost on Dean Skelton and his players as they sat in the home dressing room after the match against Highfield on Saturday.

One more wicket, of course, and they would have agreed wholeheartedly. But involvement rarely does much for objectivity.

All the same, S&B’s players will have been encouraged without a cavil that their performance was far removed from the supine nonsense they had dished up against Maghull the previous week.

Instead, they had batted enterprisingly in a game that was halted for 45 minutes by drizzle before Skelton’s declaration, always a tricky call in a rain-interrupted game, left Highfield 42 overs in which to score 189.

The visitors never got close; Bobby Wincer and Mo Kashif saw to that.

During a couple of hours’ cricket, the shape of which home supporters have come to recognise very well this summer, Kashif took six wickets and Bobby Wincer three, including both openers, as Highfield were made to fight like hell even for the satisfaction of a draw.

This was a trifle surprising given that the visitors had recruited Lancashire’s Will Williams to augment their attack, but Williams took one for 32 from 14 overs and was caught at midwicket by Alex Halsall when trying to pull a ball from Kashif.

Yet if this was an afternoon in which the familiar patterns of S&B’s season were emphasised – Highfield’s batsmen rarely got Wincer or Kashif off the square – it was also a fine day for Halsall, who made 34, his team’s highest individual score, and then took two fine catches.

The second of these grabs, a reflex effort at short leg, continued a later clatter of wickets that left the visitors with 15 balls at the last pair. But Chris McLoughlin and Steve Rotherham held firm and deserve full credit for doing so.

Of comparable merit, though, was S&B’s batting. Adam Phillips made an attractive 18 before he skied an attempted pull off Williams to mid-on. Bellis Shukla anchored the early part of the innings with 28 and Matthew Wood, on his home debut, was one of seven players to make double figures.

After the rain break, it was necessary to accelerate towards a defendable total and responsibility for this fell first to Halsall and David Snellgrove, who put on 55, and then to Skelton and Kashif, who added another 55 before the declaration came.

In reply, Highfield’s openers, Ryan Hargreaves and Joel Welsby, skipped along merrily to 35 in six overs before Wincer castled them both and there was no point thereafter when Highfield looked like winning the game.

S&B took seven points for their efforts but their failure to win when the teams around them were doing so, dropped Skelton’s side to sixth in the Love Lane First Division table.

Frankly, that could not matter loss. Skelton and his team will face the even sterner test of promotion-hungry Spring View on Saturday reassured they can produce a tough, competitive cricket against a side whose own ambitions were very plain. Indeed, they did so with something to spare.

1st XI Scorecard    

S&B’s second team must be sick of sniffing victories without tasting them.

On Saturday, Tom Wainwright’s side took the seventh Birkenhead Park wicket with the home side still 44 runs short of parity, but Mike Bowe’s unbeaten 80 helped his team achieve a two-wicket victory and deepen S&B’s problems at the foot of the table.

Wainwright had to take comfort from a fine all-round performance by Shaun Rimmer, who made 25 and took three for 25, and from Kyle Cranston’s 34 in what turned out to be a losing cause.

2nd XI Scorecard

On Sunday, Matthew Hennessy’s 84 was the backbone of the third team’s 207 for seven declared against Wigan, but rain ended the game with thew home team 18 without loss in reply.

3rd XI Scorecard

See Angus Matheson's Photo Gallery - Southport & Birkdale Cricket Club 1st XI v Highfield 19.07.25 Photos