It was a tale of two century makers for Barrow Gurney last Saturday as both First and Second teams won convincingly.
At Hanham, it was Mark Brown who led the way, opening the batting with Jordan Allen (27) and who paced his innings beautifully. After a restrained opening stand of 63 with Allen, Barrow lost a couple of quick wickets until Ed Holdaway (26) joined Brown who played the anchor role until their partnership end at 116-4 with Brown on 37.
But Brown then upped his scoring rate hitting 8 fours and 4 sixes as he raced to his hundred in the later overs. Will Comley (46 not out) provided excellent support in an unbroken partnership for the 6th wicket to take Barrow to 239-5 off their 40 overs. Brown finished on 105 not out.
Hanham’s reply was met with some impressively accurate bowling and they were soon well behind the scoring rate. There was a wicket apiece for Mark Fisher, Kian Ware, Frank Forge, Oscar Livesey and Phil Milton as the home side crawled to 130-5 to deny Barrow maximum points.
Meanwhile at Hobbs Lane, Patchway were the visitors and batted first against Barrow seconds. They found scoring runs hard against Steve Owen (3/21) and Adam Brace (2/12), in particular, and a modest score looked inevitable until Lee Reed (83) took charge in the last 10 overs to bring Patchway to 185-8, with Paul Gard chipping in with a couple of late wickets (2/39).
Gard was soon in action with the bat, opening with Sam Turner, who was playing in his first game this season after some time away from the game. After surviving an early scare Turner played with increasing confidence and began to be particularly severe on anything short. At 103 Gard was caught on the boundary for 33, but that did not trouble Turner who motored to 128 not out to lead Barrow to a 9-wicket win.
