BROUGHTON 4ths v LUDDINGTON (NORTH LINDSEY LEAGUE)

BY GLEN SANDS


Luddington's Sunday team took another stride towards promotion last weekend with a comfortable victory at Broughton. The home captain, Tom Brock, won the toss and decided to bat first but lost a wicket off the third ball when Tom Reed was caught by Gareth Parkin off Matthew Mellers. Arron Curry enhanced his reputation as the Isle of Axholme's best fielder with three catches, the third of which removed the obdurate Kavindish whose innings of eight runs was spread very thinly over twenty-one overs.
Seven of Broughton's batsmen succumbed to catches, none more spectacular than Jamie Arrowsmith's full-stretch dive although Andy Lawson's and Joe Woolhouse's more straightforward efforts were equally valuable, particularly as Woolhouse removed Kyle Kitchen who top-scored for Broughton with nineteen. Rick Green's over and a half polished off the home team's innings as he removed the final two batsmen with successive balls to leave Broughton eighty-three all out - a total which included seventeen extras thanks partly to the sloping pitch and a bracing breeze blowing across the wicket. Matthew Mellers' three wickets for seventeen runs were a fair reward for an impressive spell of fast bowling and Danny Taylor deserved his one wicket but the bowling honours went to Curry whose eleven overs of devious spin gave him four for nineteen.
Luddington's reply got off to a flimsy start as they too lost a wicket before scoring - Darren Clark trudged back to the pavilion as the bowler, Brock, congratulated the catcher, Kitchen. Four overs later Taylor joined Clark back in the changing room without a run to his name and when Woolhouse was bowled by Tom Reed in the next over for eleven Luddington were on thirteen for three and in danger of blemishing their one hundred percent record this season.
Broughton might have been fancying their chances as Arrowsmith joined Lawson at the crease but Lawson has fond memories of the Broughton pitch. Anyone who had forgotten his lightning-quick half-century last season would have had their memory jogged as he quickly restored control for the Isle side. At the end of the week that saw the Olympic flame pass as closely to Luddington as it's ever likely to, he struck the ball faster, higher and stronger than any piece of leather deserves and raced to a match-winning fifty-two with forty in boundaries. At the other end Arrowsmith had played a few nice shots in his fifteen as he and Lawson put on an unbroken stand of seventy-one for the fourth wicket to win the game inside eighteen overs.
Luddington are without another league game until August although they will play the semi-final of the cup, at home to Broughton, in three weeks.