Another Friday with heavy rain meant the toss was always going to be important in Barrow’s 1st XI game against St Mary Redcliffe and so it proved. Fortunately, for once, Phil Milton won it and it was not a tough decision for him to ask Redcliffe to bat first.
James Riley and Matt Owen opened the bowling and were very tight as usual; Riley bagged the first wicket thanks to a trademark Ben Skuse catch at gully. First change of Ed Holdaway and Premil Torrington bowled tightly without much luck and it took the introduction of Samweera and a couple of stumpings to truly turn the game Barrow’s way as Redcliffe continued to struggled to score freely. Coming back on at the end Riley and Premil took a couple of wickets each to leave Redliffe 143-8 from 45. Sami finishing 8-3-30-4 and Riley 9-2-13-3. A few more than Barrow would have liked thanks to a good Redcliffe partnership at the end.
Ali Hood and Ben Skuse opened up and as expected Barrow found scoring was tough. When Ben went Mark Brown started to make it look easy, crashing his first two balls for four, but eventually he fell for 29. Wickets then fell relatively regularly throughout the innings but Ed batting well again before getting a grubber and being bowled for 29. It took Sami and Premil to see Barrow home with 3.5 overs to spare and 3 wickets in hand; there was however some dodgy running between the wickets which could easily have put the result in doubt.
Barrow now lie 5th in the League after 4 games.