With the return of Lawrence Delasaux, who has just moved up to a career high of 72 in this month’s World Rankings, Grove Park were at full strength for their trip to Wigan Cricket. Wigan however, were missing their star players, which allowed Lawrence, Yawar Abbas and Morgan Hibberd to record straight game victories at the top of the order.
Ky Hibberd went in to the match confident of extending his 13 match winning streak against lower ranked, Paul McDonald. However, on the hot bouncy courts, the tall, skilful, Wigan No.4 was allowed to dominate the rallies from the centre of the court and Ky’s energetic running was not quite enough to prevent the loss in 4 very tight games.
After just missing out in the first game, Alex Cutts came back strongly to win in 4 games to complete an 18 – 4 win for the team. This cut New Brighton’s lead to just 2 points in the table but a 5-0 win would have earned Grove Park the full 20 points and they would have shared the top spot.
Wins for Lancs Health & Rackets and Manchester Northern keep them in contention just a few points behind the two leaders, in what is shaping up to be the most open Championship race in years.