Lancashire League Handbook 2020

18 The season got under way the day after with the reigning championsWalsden losing at home to Burnley. All five of the other matches on the first day had home wins with Lowerhouse reversing their fortunes from 24 hours earlier with a 21 run win against Todmorden. Clitheroe, Crompton, Ramsbottom and Rochdale were the other winners. In Division Two there was a similar pattern with home wins for Bacup, Colne, Enfield, Haslingden and Middleton with Rishton breaking the home dominance with a win at East Lancs thanks to a match winning 134 and 4 wickets from professional Mansoor Amjad. In 2018 the Championship was a runaway victory but Division One in 2019 saw a much closer competition as it seemed that no one could be sure of going into a game assured of winning which indicates that we have a highly competitive League and this can be borne out by the fact that in 2018 the top 3 lost just 6 games between them. In 2019 the top three accumulated a total of 17 defeats. The season went down to the last day and probably the last hour before the title was confirmed. Going into the final set of league fixtures there was a possibility that any one of three clubs could possibly win the League. Burnley led the way with 176 points followed by Lowerhouse on 166 and reigning champions Walsden on 162. There were several possible scenarios but realistically Burnley had to lose if they were to miss out. So Lowerhouse seemed to be in pole position for the runners up position however an outstanding bowling performance by Jack Wynn with 8 for 26 gave Ramsbottom a win which meant that Walsden had the chance to leapfrog Lowerhouse to take the Holland Cup as runners up and that was exactly what the did with a 40 run victory over Church at Scott Street. 575 runs and 56 wickets from professional Umesh Karunaratne backed up by 480 runs from skipper Nick Barker and 444 from Jake Hooson and 35 wickets from Jamie Shackleton paved the way to the runners up slot. Burnley lost their contracted professional and engaged substitutes and a solid 59 in the last match fromAshar Zaidi guided them to the win they needed at home to Todmorden. Amateurs Liam Bedford with 484 runs, Chris Holt 287, Joey Marshall 239 and Matt Roberts 199 were the top run scorers during the season. Chris Holt also took 41 wickets backed up by Bharat Tripathi with 32 and Joe McCluskie 24. In Division Two the battle for promotion was between two teams who headed the table for some time and despite a win over their rivals during the Bank Holiday weekend creating a tense end to the season, Middleton became runners up as their rivals won their next to last game at Bacup the following weekend. For Middleton professional Chris Williams made 533 runs & took 46