Sutcliffe content with start to season

May 10 2008 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post

HAVING seen his team secure two wins and suffer two defeats in the first month of the Premier League season, Hightown captain Ian Sutcliffe is surely justified in feeling “quietly pleased” with his side’s progress.

Hammerings at the hands of Fleetwood Hesketh and Ormskirk have been balanced by hard-earned triumphs over both Northern and Southport and Birkdale; Hightown are eighth in the top division of the Business Assistance Liverpool Competition; they have made a decent start to the 2008 campaign.

Yet while the Sandy Lane skipper is far too much of a gentleman to say so, he is getting slightly fed up that his team’s respectable record has attracted only disparagement and condescension from one or two of his rivals.

“People continue to think of us as a poor club or a poor side and they think we’re over-achieving by being in the Premier League at all,” said Sutcliffe. “But we’re not over-achieving. We’re where we are on merit.”

During the last couple of years, that “merit” has included a much-chronicled battle with the Liverpool Competition’s Management Committee over Hightown’s facilities, a battle which resulted in the club’s promotion to the Premier League being confirmed and also in a raft of much-needed improvements being made to those facilites. If you were a talented young cricketer at Hightown, it was a win-win outcome.

Having survived that confrontation, Sutcliffe’s players began last season intent of proving that they were capable of staying in the top division. Ten wins from 26 matches and an eighth place finish is all the proof that any but the doctrinaire critics needed of their success.

This year, officials have had to cope with what Sutcliffe described as the “absolute nightmare” of trying to employ Sri Lankan left-arm seamer Nandika Ranjith as their professional, an enterprise which Hightown eventually gave up as a bad job. Instead, the club has just recently enlisted the services of the former Lancaster all-rounder Janissar Khan.

Yet injuries to both Gareth Glynne-Jones and Martin Stoker, added to the regular unavailablility through work and university studies of Adam Phillips and Guy Edwards, have meant that Sutcliffe has never yet been able to put out even his strongest amateur eleven.

“It’s a struggle at the moment,” he admits, “and it will continue to be a struggle, but we’re used to it.”

Perhaps so, but those who watched Hightown recover from 81 for seven to reach 148 all out against Southport and Birkdale and then bowl out Mark Fletcher’s team for 92 were in little doubt that here was a well-led outfit, united by a common purpose and skilled both in fighting for every run and in defending low totals on a true, if slow, wicket.

“For myself and for the three other players in the side who once played for S&B, Monday’s win was special,” reflected Sutcliffe, “but it’s always pleasing to beat Northern too because they are our closest neighbours.”

TODAY Business Assistance Liverpool Competition ECB Premier League: Fleetwood Hesketh v Maghull, Lytham v Hightown, Northern v Bootle, Ormskirk v New Brighton, Prestatyn v Formby, Southport and Birkdale v Colwyn Bay, Wallasey v St Helens Recs. First Division: Ainsdale v Wigan, Huyton v Wavertree, Leigh v St Helens, Newton-le-Willows v Orrell Red Triangle, Northop Hall v Sefton Park, Rainford v Liverpool, Skelmersdale v Highfield.