SEA COP BATSMEN LOOKING TO FIND SOME RUNS

Date: 20th May 2014

A Paul Edwards copyright exclusive for L&DCC Official Website.

Rainhill's Qureshi poses problems for them

Last Saturday was possibly not the best time for Fleetwood Hesketh’s batsmen to pit their skills against Mohammad Qureshi. The Rainhill spinner’s accuracy and turn nearly accounted for Lytham on the opening day of the league season and it will be fascinating to see how well other Premier League sides deal with him.

Certainly, Qureshi posed far too many tough questions for Lee Rimmer’s men, eight of whom were dismissed by him at a cost of 17 runs in one of the season’s more remarkable matches. Having seen their side skittled for 66, Fleetwood Hesketh’s supporters then watched as their bowlers took six wickets for eight runs to reduce the visitors from 50-3 to 58-9 before Phil Veacock and Matthew Dale steered Rainhill’s ship home. Only three batsmen in the match (Neil Rimmer, Derek Sykes and Mike Rotherham) faced more than 17 deliveries.

Yet Saturday’s collapse by the home side only led to the lowest in a series of progressively poor totals for Fleetwood Hesketh. In their four defeats

Rimmer’s men have posted scores of 148, 120 and 98 and 66, giving an average of 10.8 runs per wicket, and the new skipper is probably under no illusions about his team’s needs in the derby at Trafalgar Road on Saturday.

“I’m not worried about the bowling because that’s been quality so far,” said Rimmer, speaking before last Saturday’s game, which, in any case, only served to reinforce established trends. “It’s just the batsmen that need to knuckle down. It’s as simple as that.

“We’ve got batsmen that can do the business but there’s just been a lack of application. We’ve faced good bowlers on not so good pitches but it’s not the case that we’re totally dependent on Neil Rimmer to get the runs.

“We’ve played three top sides, and even against Leigh when we were defending only 120 we had them eight down and then dropped a couple of catches before they won.”

“The bowling and fielding’s been brilliant. It’s a lack of runs that is costing us at the moment. It’s early days yet but I think that if we’d got another 20 against Leigh we would have won that game and another 40 or 50 against Lytham would have made that match very interesting.

“As it was, Lytham came out and played shots early on. It was difficult to contain when we wanted to take wickets. It’s hard to keep the runs down and attack at the same time, so fair play to them.”