Cotswold Hills League

ALCESTER & Ragley's hopes of surviving the drop look slim after they slumped to their eighth defeat of the season.

And the Ragley Park side is unlikely to end their drought this weekend as they play host to runaway league leaders Exhall & Wixford in a local derby.

Tanworth were the visitors on Saturday and, having won the toss, put the home side into bat on a damp wicket.

They made a fast, solid start from the first four overs but some very poor shot selection by the top order proved costly as the innings plunged from 21-0 to 39-4.

It never recovered for Alcester and wickets continued to fall until number 10 Steve Capron finally produced the top score of the innings with an unbeaten 17 as Ragley were all out for 99 in the 33rd over.

In reply, the home side were determined to turn it around in the field to make up for the embarrassing effort with the bat.

Opening bowler Marc Woolley found the conditions to his liking as he had two early lbws given to leave Tanworth at 8-2 from five overs.

Fellow opener bowler Stuart Prince was also keeping the batsmen quiet and he was rewarded with two wickets in four balls as Tanworth reached 38-4.

There were several other good shouts for lbw that were not given and the teams went into tea with Tanworth on 42-4 and Alcester well in the game.

After tea, the bowlers could not repeat their earlier heroics and the Tanworth pair of Hughes (25) and Brazier (20no) saw off Prince (2-30) and Woolley (2-28) with ease.

Alcester only enjoyed one further success as leg spinner Adam Shaw bowled Hughes with one that the batsmen thought was passing by the stumps.

Exhall took another giant step towards the Premier Division title with a 53-run victory over fellow championship hopefuls Stratford Bards.

Exhall reached 168-7 and then had the visitors squirming on 115-8 at the end of their overs.

Great Alne claimed a six- wicket victory over Winchcombe II in Division Three, while Temple Grafton claimed a 79-run victory over fellow Division Four high-fliers Alcester & Ragley II.

Cookhill made it a clean sweep of Division Six victories with their seven-wicket defeat of Claverdon.

Cookhill restricted Claverdon to 135-6, Billy Gill taking 3-37, before they reached their target for the loss of just three wickets.

Nick Charles played superbly and was 58 not out at the end.