Poor Leighton routed again and stay at the bottom

The defeat at Bell Close was their sixth in a row, having made a promising start to the season, but they now find themselves 23 points adrift of Tiddington above them.

Frustratingly for Leighton, they made a terrific start to the match but let things slip.

Dan Scott led the charge with some sharp left arm bowling and soon had three wickets to his name as he tore through the Aston Rowant top order.

With the visitors top order looking distinctly out of sorts the scoreboard was soon showing 53-5 off 18 overs and Town looked well in control of the affair.

However Whatman (33), Knowler (47) and Cooper (41) played with more patience and determination than their colleagues.

More missed catches did not help Town’s cause and Rowant were able to bat out their 50 overs scoring 207-9 when it could have been rather less.

Scott took 5-47 with one wicket each for Kempster, Lee Selfe, Tom Light and Phillip Whatmore.

This should have been an achievable total. However the home sides batting failed to inspire.

Five batsmen were caught in the slip area as they seemed unable to leave any wide deliveries alone as the fielders in the slip cordon enjoyed catching practice.

Wickets fell regularly. Tom Callaghan (22), Whatmore (19), Light (15) and Selfe (15) were the only Town players to make it into double figures.

Leighton’s luck was epitomised in Mark Burfoot’s dismissal. Whatmore drove the ball hard into the ground and back towards the bowler. The bowler jumped up in the air to parry the ball, but with great fortune managed to deflect it into the stumps with Burfoot out of his ground.

As wickets continued to fall regularly, the writing was on the wall for Leighton as they were dismissed for a miserable 95 runs and remain at the bottom of the division.

Mark Nelson came up agonisingly short of his century but helped Great Brickhill to see off Tiddington and move up to fourth in the table.

Arjun Jhala took 5-31 as the visitors were bowled out for 213.

But despite losing fellow opener George Morris for 6, Nelson and captain Graeme Carter put on a 90-run partnership to put Great Brickhill in charge.

Nelson scored the bulk of the runs, but fell on 97 as he looked set for triple figures.

Brickhill ran a risky game though, and lost seven wickets in total, with Carter running out of partners before he fell for his 42.

However, it was left to Jhala and George Humphries to score the winning runs as the home side reached 217-7.

In Division 3, Great Brickhill 2nds (87-4) made light work of Tiddington 2nds (84) to remain second.

In Division 5, Leighton Buzzard 2nds were on the wrong end of a four wicket defeat to Horspath 3rds but remain third.

Batting first, a number of batsmen made a decent start but were unable to go on to make the big score which teams need.

Scott Clark top scored for Town with 40. Sam Roberts(33), Ben Turley(26), Rob Scott (25), Gareth Benger (25) and Andy Smith (24) all helped to get the score up to 207.

The visitors were soon among the wickets with one for Roberts and two for Benger leaving Horspath on 39-3.

A rally then saw the score past 100 but Bertie Barrett took 2 wickets in his first over to give Leighton some hope of success.

A further wicket for Barrett gave Town further hope at 136-6 but dropped catches allowed the Horspath batsmen to secure victory at 211-6 with overs to spare.