Fisher masterclass lights up frustrating draw for Norley Hall

At City Road, Parkfield Liscard first team were the visitors in a battle of two mid-table placed teams with no promotion or relegation considerations to contend with.

The visitors won the toss and, after Liam Martlew struck early, it was honours even as the scoreboard was kept ticking along with aggressive stroke play while Ryan Wood took two further wickets.

When first change bowler Robert Collier struck and Martlew enacted a run out, it became very much advantage Norley Hall at 107-5.

Even at 181-7, there was an opportunity for the hosts to stop the Parkfield revival before it became too much of an issue, but the visitors' tail end batters took the score beyond 200.

The reintroduction of Wood (4-47) brought an end to the Parkfield fun as they were all out for 245 in 53.5 overs. But it was a total far in excess of what the home team should have been chasing.

Norley Hall needed a strong start and this came from Daniel Fisher, who was unleashing boundaries all over the place, and good support from Harry Singh brought up a century opening partnership.

Unfortunately, Fisher was out for 81 (from 72 balls) and Singh was joined by Shah Afridi, who hit a couple of sumptuous extra cover drives very early in his innings.

However, Singh was caught close to the mid-wicket boundary looking to go big with a deserved half-century at his mercy for 46.

With the score at 153-2, and into the last hour of the game, Norley Hall knew they were going to receive only 46 overs back from the visitors and the required run rate rose to around 8 an over.

To complicate matters further, the visitors started to deploy increasingly defensive field placements in order to stem the boundaries coming from the bat of Afridi.

At first, this ploy didn't work as Afridi decided to go over the top of the boundary riders and hit sixes instead as he brought up an eye catching fifty.

Disaster struck shortly after, however, when he was caught on the long off boundary for 56 in 55 balls going for one big shot too many.

With the visitors placing nine fielders on the boundary for the last few overs, the hosts finished agonisingly short on 237-6 in 46 overs, Matthew Hayes finishing unbeaten on 31.

Meanwhile, an understrength second team visited promotion-chasing Rainhill.

Winning the toss and choosing to bat first, the hosts put a weakened bowling attack to the sword as they amassed a huge 249-2 declared in only 29.4 overs.

This was inspired by an impressive 167 not out in only 103 balls from former Lancashire Under-18 James Clarke, whose class told against a makeshift bowling attack.

In reply, after a tough start which saw them 30-3, Norley Hall looked to be giving chasing such a large total a real go thanks to Ismail Ahmedji (48), Mohammad Kapadia (23) and Minhaz Pathan (29).

However, with the score on 122, the Norley Hall innings collapsed as the last six wickets fell for only three runs as they were all out for 125 in 30.2 overs.