West of England Prem 2 Glos/Wilts

Thornbury 149-2 beat Lechlade 148 ao by eight wickets

BACK-to-back wins have taken Thornbury out of the West of England Prem 2 Glos/Wilts league relegation zone And it was a remarkable victory for Thornbury who were not expected to beat the table-toppers on Saturday but not only did so but did it in style at The Ship Field.

Lechlade won the toss and elected to bat in gloomy conditions and their innings got off to a flier, with openers James Palmer and Tom Young taking the attack to Thornbury’s opening bowlers, Harry Wormwell and Luke Davis.

However, the breakthrough came in the 12th over when a fired-up Josh Slade replaced Harry Wormwell and ripped his way through the Lechlade top-order.

Palmer was the first to go, when he was caught by Dan Davis off Slade’s bowling.

A second came when Slade trapped dangerman Brad Dial lbw for six runs and a third when Young was caught by Kyp Bridgen for 17, leaving the league leaders on 70-3.

Slade was supported well at the other end by Davis, who picked up the wickets of Joe Breet (12) and Benny Ellis (8), with them falling caught behind and caught at first-slip, respectively.

Captain Richard Trotman came on and picked up four wickets whilst Davis went and grabbed himself a third, in a very strong bowling performance by Thornbury.

When Lechlade captain Freddie Martin became the fourth and final victim of the afternoon for Trotman, he signalled the end to his side’s sub-par batting display, with Lechlade finishing on 148 all-out after just 34.3 overs.

Thornbury were hoping openers Davis and Nick Willis-Stovold could come up with an opening stand somewhere near the level of last week’s, where Thornbury won their first match of the season against Burbage and Easton Royal, to put their side in a commanding position.

However this wasn’t the case, with Willis-Stovold stumped off the bowling of Joe Breet for one run.

Davis fell three overs later when he was clean bowled by a perfect Yorker from Lechlade’ s opening bowler, Liam Smith, leaving Thornbury on 31-2 after six overs.

Bridgen found himself in a similar position of needing a solid partnership to assure his side of chasing down a sub-par total and he needed to do so with Slade, a man who was batting with the confidence he had gained from his bowling heroics.

They both made fifty runs on their way to seeing the home side through to their first home league win of the season and they did so with ease, with neither batsmen looking in any strong danger of getting out.

They both made exactly 51 runs with Kyp (66 balls) doing it in one fewer delivery than Slade (67) as they made it to 149-2 and therefore achieving their side’s excellent win.

It now puts Thornbury three points above bottom-placed Gloucester City Winget and two ahead of Burbage and Easton Royal in their fight to stay away from the drop zone this summer.

And their next challenge is to make up ground on Warminster, who are seven points ahead of them in the table.

That recovery continued this Saturday with an important clash.

After beating the league leaders, Thornbury will have confidence to maintain the winning streak as they travel to mid-table Bidderstone, who lost to Goatacre last Saturday.