The dozen or so spectators on Saturday witnessed one of the best Barrow First Team run chases in recent years. Losing the toss, second bottom team Woodpeckers, decided to bat first but got off to a horror start when James Riley bowled their opener Tim Britton, the destroyer of many Barrow attacks down the years, first ball of the match with a peach. If Barrow thought they were in for an easy game, however, they were wrong as, unperturbed, the Woodpeckers batsmen came at Riley and Paul Glazzard before Griffiths gave his wicket away to Glazzard with the score on 25. The skipper Worgan and the keeper Curtis put on a partnership of 157 only giving a couple of chances along the way; one a tough caught behind following a slash and the other a dolly that Riley dropped, Riley however regained his composure to run out Worgan going for a suicidal second having scored 74. At this point, following some words at drinks, Barrow got a grip of the scoring rate and got some control back by bowling one side of the wicket, bowling dots and upping the fielding, Glazzard finally got Curtis LBW for a chanceless 81. Barrow were still looking at a big score to chase but some tighter bowling in the last 15 kept the score down to 275-8 from the 45. Glazzard finished with another 5 for ending 12-1-65-5, credit also to Kieran Owen who bowled well at a very difficult time and Riley who bowled a good spell at the death. Oscar Livesey, making his second appearance for the first team this season, also deserves a mention for some fantastic fielding in the deep field saving at least 20 runs sweeping the boundary edges.
So to the Barrow innings, Sam Turner and Mark Brown opened the batting knowing they needed to score at a run a ball for the full 45 to get for the victory but found the going tough as some tight straight bowling in the first 10 left Barrow on about 35. Playing his last game of the season Sam was first to go caught trying to up the scoring with the score on 52. This brought number 3 Nick Moore to the crease, he and Brown slowly began to up the run rate with Brown moving past 50 before Nick departed for a well crafted 40 from 42 balls with the score now on 167. Brown, batting as well as anyone has ever seen him, showed what a good player he is, bringing up his thrilling ton, before falling to a catch on the boundary, finishing on 103 from 96 with seven 6’s .
The run rate needed however was, still, about 10 an over when Mick Hardy fell on 189-4. At this point Phil Milton and James Mitchell decided to go for it, Milton hitting his first ball for 4, one over went for 25 and all of a sudden Barrow were back to to a run a ball needed. Milton went after a quick fire 23 from 12 balls and James went, run out for 48 from 44, leaving Glazzard and Ed Holdaway to knock off the winning runs in the last over to complete a thrilling win with 4 balls left.
Overall an absolutely fantastic game with contributions from all over the team. Despite the win however Barrow are still 6th in the table as teams above them won too; just 17 points separate 2nd and 6th.