IN recent years Kearsley - Tonge matches have rarely been short of drama.

Last season the main players were Swift and Sikander, both of whom are now performing on a different stage, and so it was very much a case of the same play with a similar cast, but with differing leading men in the star roles.

Just who those leading men would turn out to be soon became apparent once Simon Anderton had won the toss and asked Kearsley to bat first. But nobody, I think, was quite prepared for the storyline that was to be enacted over the next couple of hours!

If, at 6 for 2, the home side had slipped into a bit of a hole, then half a dozen overs later that hole had become a bottomless pit with the scoreboard reading 20 for 5 and the two leading men, Dion Taljard, and especially Ian Taylor beginning to realise that all their birthdays had come at once!

The wicket was very flat, but bone dry and grassless. Bowling from the main road end, at least two balls an over seemed to be taking a piece out of the flaky surface and lifting more or less off a length.

Ratledge was the first to go, fending off a Taljard delivery to Nisar at gully. Thomson was leg-before to Taylor who, with the total still on 6, had Tom Whittle playing at a rising ball.

Sporting change

There followed a big shout for caught behind, whereupon Whittle gave himself out when it appeared that the umpire may have been none too sure, which, it has to be said, makes a pleasant change in the current climate!

When a batting side is really struggling, as Kearsley undoubtedly were, it follows, as surely as night follows day, that there will be a run-out, and sure enough, Davies and Foy obliged after the ball had been played into the gully area. It was the usual yes-no and, with both batsmen at the same end, it was Foy who had drawn the short straw!

At 18 Davies fended Taylor off his body to give Jim Aspden the first of his three catches, and by this time it had become patently obvious that anything pitched within the batsman's arc had to go. Chris Monks hit two consecutive 4s off Taljard, one a blistering off-drive, the other a cut backward of point, before Partington suffered the same fate as Davies.

Taylor soon accounted for Fisher lbw, and then Monks played one attacking shot too many and a swirling skier was well taken by Bob Waller. Fazal hit Taljard even higher and Northrop had to run miles to take the catch.

That was 45 for 9, and the end came one run later when Pellowe provided Aspden with victim number three in the ring around the bat.

Batting at No.10, Mel Whittle was left high and dry at the other end, no doubt pondering on the ups and downs of life. Three days previously, admittedly playing on a more batsman-friendly wicket at Nantwich, he had hit an undefeated 70 to win an Over-50s game for Lancashire against Cheshire, and now all this!

Ian Taylor, who had only been declared fit at the last minute after having suffered a painful injury at a karate class, had taken 6 for 18, and both he and Taljard had fully exploited the helpful conditions by simply putting the ball in the right spot and allowing nature to take its course.

The unbelievable had happened, and Kearsley, with 10 straight league wins under their belt, 17 if you include the various cup competitions, had been bowled out in 110 deliveries for the lowest total of the season to date.

Wicket brushed

The general opinion during the interval between innings (much too early for tea!) was that 70 would really have pushed Tonge to the limit, and that 90 would have been pretty well impossible.

Probably deciding that any rolling might break the wicket up completely, Tonge opted for it to be merely brushed, and battle re-commenced.

Akber, bowling from Taljard's end, had a huge lbw appeal against Rick Northrop turned down from his first ball, and soon afterwards hit the same batsman on the pads with enough force to knock him off his feet.

Again the umpire said no, and from then on, amazingly, the whole nature of the game changed, and Tonge hardly ever looked likely to lose a wicket.

Whittle had an off-day, and he doesn't have too many of those, while Akber, with his extra miles-per-hour, was almost certainly going straight through the crumbling surface without getting the lethal response that Taylor and Taljard had managed to extract.

Northrop and Adil Nisar, looking far more comfortable than any of the Kearsley batsmen with the possible exception of Monks, hit eight 4s between them, 5-3 in favour of Northrop, who played particularly well.

The whole game had lasted less than 30 overs. In 67 balls Tonge had wrapped up their reply, and the celebrations could begin at Westhoughton, Walkden and all points North.

At 3.55pm, the Kearsley players were able to escape to the privacy of their dressing-room, where the 'behind-closed-doors' conversation would have been, to say the least, interesting!