Cricket: Firwood batsmen pile up runs in final until rain halts play

Sep 3 2007 by Paul Edwards, Liverpool Daily Post

FIRWOOD Bootle and Greenmount will make a second attempt to decide the destiny of the 2007 LCB Knock-Out Trophy next Sunday after their bid to play the final was ended by the persistent rain at Aigburth yesterday.

Greenmount’s Brandlesholme Road ground will host the replay when the Bolton League team will surely hope that home advantage will help them to contain Ian Cockbain’s batsmen more effectively than they managed at their first effort.

When the umpires Eric Hogg and Paul Tatton brought the players off at 2.30pm, the cup holders had amassed 248 for four off only 40 of their 45-over allotment and had established a clear advantage even on a good wicket and against high-scoring opposition.

The Liverpool team’s dominance was clear even after the first few overs of the final.

A first wicket partnership of 79 in 16.3 overs between Ian A Cockbain and Craig Prince established a tempo for the innings which the later batsmen ruthlessly maintained.

Although Prince was bowled by an excellentleg-stump yorker from Nazim Mohammed when he had made 18, Cockbain went on to make 77 off 60 balls, striking eight fours, some of them exquisite, and three sixes, all of them massive.

And by the time the Lancashire Academy player had perished, well caught by Martin Kaye at deep mid-wicket, Greenmount’s hard-pressed bowlers and fielders had also begun to be run ragged by Graham Lloyd’s canny placements, adroit nudges and reverse sweeps. As the former Old Trafford favourite coaxed the ball around in making a 79-ball 91 which included only four boundaries, Aigburth’s outfield must have seemed large indeed to a side used to compact Bolton League grounds like their own. Bootle will face a very different challenge in six days’ time.