ANOTHER great weekend for Sandford Cricket Club saw the First Eleven promoted back to the Premier Division and the Second Eleven jump to second place in their league.

The Firsts must now just beat either Ivybridge at home this weekend or bottom club Plymstock the following week to win the league.

The position for the Seconds is slightly more complicated as they have two quite tricky games left away to Barton and home to Plymstock and probably need to win both to be sure of playing in a higher league next season.

Should Bideford lose away to league leaders Paignton this weekend then one win could still be enough.

The First Eleven avenged an earlier defeat in the season to Plympton by thumping 310 runs against them this time round.

Skipper Richard Foan scored 153 which means he is just five runs short of 1,000 league runs for the season with two games to go.

For his sake, let’s hope these games are not affected by the weather as he was out with nearly six overs of the innings to go and should surely have reached the milestone in this innings!

There were useful contributions from Chris Jelley (42), Matt Theedom (39) and Neil Bettiss (21).

Plympton were never interested in the chase as they need bonus points in their bid to avoid the drop. They crawled to 222 for six in reply with Jamie Palmer and Ryan Glass both taking two wickets.

Matt Theedom is away on his John O’Groats to Lands End cycle ride this weekend but hopefully Grant Ward will be available as a natural replacement.

The Second Eleven did a demolition job on Tiverton Heathcote and Shaun Hawkins did a demolition job on the umpire’s car!

Heathcote had no answer to the guile and craft of Tom Williams who finished with figures of five for 19 in less than six overs.

There were four catches taken in the slips, two stumpings and a run out as the hosts were bowled out for only 88 in 21.4 overs.

Shaun Hawkins took two wickets and then followed this up by thumping 72 not out as Sandford cantered to a nine wicket victory in 16 overs with the game being finished by 4.15pm.

In what turned out to be the last over of the game Shaun hit four, six, six, four, and four with the first of the sixes going well over the pavilion and landing straight on the roof of a parked Skoda car! Umpire not impressed! Bill for repair being forwarded as this article is being written!

Today, Saturday (August 26) sees the First Eleven take on Ivybridge at Creedy Park, so why not make a visit to see if the team can be crowned champions of the A Division?

Mike Canning