Sale CC Fall Short on Last Day

Sale’s premiership promotion bid fell at the final hurdle on Saturday after they were soundly beaten by champions Bowdon at Dane Road.

I S Recruitment sponsored Sale needed to restrict Bowdon to less than 5 bonus points and hope that strugglers Alvanley could upset Timperley at Stockport Road.

Sale won the toss and asked Bowdon to bat first with the aim of keeping their score below 170.

Seamers Dan Newton and Tyrone Lawrence got Sale into a promising position at 75-4. However the visitors rallied and closed on 179-7, accruing 6 crucial batting points meaning Sale couldn’t catch them. Newton and Lawrence finished with 3 wickets each.

Things went from bad to worse after tea with Pat Ashling dismissed in the first over, and the rest of the top order soon followed at Sale slumped to 20-5.

George Walker showed some resistance with 19, but when he was eighth man out with the score on 52 to writing was on the wall. Sale finally being bowled out for 68.

Agonisingly news started to filter through that Timperley had lost to, meaning a win would have been good enough to finish second.

Sale 2nd XI will be playing their cricket in division one next season after drawing a tight game at Toft.

Muneeb Iftikhar rounded off a fine season with the ball with 4 wickets and skipper Gareth Watterson 3 wickets as the home side were restricted to 161-9.

As stand of 50 between Watterson (27 not out) and Rahul Palminathan (24) for the eight wicket nearly got Sale home, but they finally closed on 153-9, 9 runs short of safety.

Sale finish the season with two trophies as both the 3rd and 4th teams won their divisions, but will rue what might have been with disappointment for their Saturday teams.