Spalding Town under-13s run in the Lincolnshire County Cup came to an abrupt end against a strong Woodhall Spa side last week.
Town batted first at Jubilee Park after winning the toss – and suffered the early loss of key batsman Paddy Harrington (8) LBW to county pace bowler Alfie Linsay (1-17) after he had hit two fours.
Ethan Lawrence was next out, bowled by Tom Caswell (1-10) for just a single to leave the visitors struggling on 21-2.
However, Ed Lanning then joined Jon Manton in a productive partnership that took the Spalding score to 50-2 in the ninth over.
Lanning hit four boundaries but was bowled by Luke Ware (2-10) for 16 – and the rest of the batting struggled to come to terms with some accurate bowling from the home side as Brandon Andrews (0), Tom Wide (2), Cameron McGeown (0), Reif Clarke (0) and Jack Patrick (4) fell in quick succession.
There was no stopping Manton, though. He hit six fours in his retired score of 35.
Despite his heroics it looked at one stage like Spalding might not even bat out their 20 overs.
They did complete their allocation thanks to some solid batting from last pair Jack Sawyer (3) and Nick Carter (2), but a final score of 83-8 was well below what had looked possible at the half way mark.
Captain Harrington opened the bowling for Town in reply – and had a close LBW appeal against danger-man Nitin Joachim turned down early on.
After that there were few alarms for the home side as Joachim (36 retired) and Henry Wilson (25 not out) reached the victory target in 14 overs without losing a wicket.
Spalding used seven bowlers but none of them was able to make the breakthrough needed to put Woodhall under pressure in their 87-0.
- Spalding Town’s under-9s suffered a 23-run loss to Market Deeping. Town scored 100-5 in their 16 overs with Ollie Dring and Ed Barnes top scoring, before Deeping smashed 123-5 in reply.
