Durham Cricket League: Heroic Horden put table-toppers in a real spin

Former West Indian test cricketer Sherwin Campbell bowls for Hylton against Dawdon opener Steven Gale on Saturday.

Burnopfield’s crushing eight-wicket reverse allowed Dawdon to make ground up, beating Hylton to move into second place, above Easington, who lost to Castle Eden.

The leaders were in real trouble at 90-5 against Horden and they were duly skittled for 122 in 38.3 overs, despite 54 from Callum Thorp, who hit three fours and two sixes.

Lal Kumar (3-18) led Horden’s outstanding bowling attack, with Adam Dixon (2-29), Ben Green (2-6), Lewis Broom and Jamie Greenwood all among the wickets.

The home side then knocked off the winning runs in 29.2 overs, with Liam Irving the pick of the batsmen (53 not out, with six boundaries). Greenwood made 26 5 and Kumar 21 not out.

Dawdon extended their winning league run to four matches by outgunning relegation-bound Hylton.

The Green Drive outfit smashed 285-4, batting first,with Steven Gale hitting a brilliant 138 and Andrew Anderson scoring 61, the pair putting on 163 for the first wicket. David Lowther added 22 and Bhavesh Patel 20, with Davis taking two wickets.

To be fair, Hylton batted very well in their attempt to gather desperate points and scored 251, bravely trying to chase the runs down.

Sherwin Campbell (79) and Kevin Mustard (60) tried their best, but Patel made the difference with 4-53, to win the game by 39 runs. Ewart and Watson both struck twice.

Castle Eden severely dented visiting Easington’s title chances in their low-scoring derby, securing a fourth win in their last five league games to eased their relegation worries.

Easington batted first and made only 99, with Keith Bailey (4-22) and Daniel Baldwin (3-12) ripping through the batting.

When Eden batted, they too found it hard going, but opening bat Tebogo Mokwena (40) and a little bit of nerve tingling, tail-wagging batting gave the home side a narrow one-wicket victory.

Bill Quay won the key relegation battle, in a remarkable high-scoring match away at Seaham Park.

Park posted an impressive 250-3, inspired by Siddharth Chitnis’s brilliant 122, 44 not out from Omar Shahid and Davy Hanson (39).

Despite an opening spell of 3-32 from Adam Bewick, Alan Mustard smashed 117 not out and Chris Little scored 80 to guide Quay home by five wickets to vastly improve their survival chances.

Durham City eased their relegation worries with a battling draw at Philadelphia.

Set 198 to win, they fell just 20 short with eight wickets down as Cameron Fyfe (39) and Jonny Bushnell (31) gave it a good go, despite Stevie Wright’s haul of 3-31.

Earlier, Phili had posted 197-6, with Amarjeet Singh scoring 77 and James Hindmarsh returning 3-54.

Crook Town have dropped into the bottom two and alarm bells must be ringing in their camp, with only one win in their last eight league games.

Hosts Esh Winning started well and all their first three batsmen got the bulk of their runs in 229-8 declared. Stuart Hall hit 68, John Carmedy smashed 98 and Michael Bussey added 33, with Andrew Robinson (3-53) and Steven Chapman (3-39) returning decent bowling figures.

Crook, though, only managed 130 all out in reply, despite a fine knock of 78 from Andrew Pratt. Jordan Grosset returned 5-28 and Paul Chivers 3-25.