LAST Sunday was not a day I shall remember for very long with much affection! writes Peter Stafford

Having been told that Eagley were away to Chorley in the Thwaites LCB competition, I decided to make that my match of the day.

And so, having watched the World Cup Final in a fairly disinterested way (it is hard to enjoy a football match when you do not really care who wins), we made our way to the Chorley ground, having managed to negotiate the Hampton Court Maze that is now the Chorley town centre!

When we arrived the game was in progress. "Who's batting?", my wife asked. "Must be Eagley", I said, "I don't recognise any fielders". Then I walked past the dressing room and realised that I did not recognise any of the batting side either. They all looked a bit young, which of course they were, it being Chorley's third team we were watching! "Where's the first team playing?" I asked the barman. "Eagley", he replied.

To cut a long story short, we arrived at Dunscar, having been directed through a diversion which seemed to take in half the Chorley area, just as the players were leaving the field in the rain.

Two hours or so later we watched the bowl-off which resulted in Eagley quickly going 4-0 down and, as a result, out of the competition. It was something of a pity, as with 161 for 3 on the board against a Chorley side which is not the power in the land it once was, the Bolton side were probably favourites provided they managed to get rid of Neil Senior fairly quickly. But that was academic, and Eagley had become the fourth Bolton League side to fall by the wayside in a bowl-off.

Thankfully, Kearsley, over at Great Eccleston, managed to break the jinx. After Jordan Thornley's half-century and Steve Davies' 38 had put them well on the way, they, too, were forced into the lottery by the rain. After Dave Leonard had been the only player to "score" in a 1-1 draw, the same player put Kearsley through with a "golden wicket" in the sudden death competition that ensued.

Walkden went through fairly predictably at the expense of Little Hulton, Watson, Dave Smith and Parkinson knocking off the required 114 in less than half the allotted overs. The two remaining Bolton League sides are in different halves of the draw and, that being the case, would not meet until the Old Trafford final, which would be a mouth-watering prospect indeed.

But both Kearsley and Walkden have a lot of work to do before that happens. Walkden, in fact, go to Chorley in the quarter-final which, in a manner of speaking, is where I came in!

Two of the stars of Saturday's cricket were Adil Nisar, who hit an unbeaten 124 against Farnworth, and Narendra Hirwani, whose 5 for 19 in Heaton's rain-ruined match against Horwich was his ninth five-wicket haul of the season to date. All of which brings Nisar's run total up to 776 and Hirwani's wickets to 61. Both statistics are fairly mind-bending with only one second half game played, but let us not get carried away with talk of new records just yet.

In 1995 when Iqbal Sikander created his 133-wicket record, he had, at the same stage of the season, 81 victims to his name, while the following season, when Brad Hodge hit a record 1,758 runs, he had hit 114 more runs than Nisar after 14 matches. But the benchmarks have been established, the targets are in place, and now it will take a superhuman effort from the two cricketers, not to mention a bit of decent weather, if Hodge and/or Sikander are to be toppled.

On Saturday I watched as Westhoughton produced a thoroughly workmanlike performance to see off a still under-achieving Kearsley side, for whom only Leonard and Thomson seemed to be on top of their game.

Steve Parker, Coates, Khan and Hart all played well, Kearsley didn't, and their problems, exacerbated by Mel Whittle's injury, will need to be addressed if they are to make Hamer Cup progress at Tonge tomorrow.

Other players who starred on Saturday were Little Lever's Anthony Hilton, who thoughtfully chose his birthday to record his first half-century of the season, Andy Taylor, who just gets better and better, and Graham Firth, who, now that he has grown too old to play for Lancashire Over-50s, is channelling all his energies into Egerton's first XI, for whom he hit a solid 42 against Astley Bridge.