ENFIELD are in the driving seat to win the Lancashire League under 17s title after a fine all-round performance at Nelson.
With two games to go, and significantly, a game in hand over championship rivals Rishton, Enfield know that the league is their's for the taking.
After beating Rishton in a top-of-the-table clash last week that brought them to within two points of the leaders, Enfield were in no mood to let the initiative drop.
And they got off to a flyer when they had Nelson struggling on 4-3 with openers Chris Heap, Munir Khan and Khurram Nazir back in the pavilion with just one run between them.
However, credit must go to Nelson's Leon Ghullam and Jonathan Finch who lived up to his promise when he said he had no intention of getting out.
The pair took the total along to 40 with a display of determined batting before Ghullam was bowled by Keith Barker Junior for 20.
That prompted another batting collapse in the Nelson innings when, first, Iqbal Mohammad was cleaned bowled by Benjamin Dowling.
In the next over the accurate bowling of opening bowler Rob Green paid off when he returned to take two wickets in three balls as he bowled Shaun Gluyas and Lee Ghullam.
That took his tally to three having already dismissed Khan.
But Finch was determined to stay at the crease and batted throughout - without getting the high score he deserved.
Finch finished unbeaten on 19 as Nelson recovered to finish on 65 for eight but that total was never going to be enough to trouble Enfield.
And so it proved. Green and Adam Bracewell gave Enfield the perfect start and put on 36 without loss before a lapse in concentration by Green ended his innings when he was caught by Leon Ghullam off the bowling of Finch, who was to be Nelson's best performer on the day.
Enfield were just nine runs short of their target when Bracewell went after he was run out thanks to a brilliant bit of fielding from Nazir.
While Enfield had plenty of overs left they probably lost a few wickets more than they would have liked to when first Finch trapped Simon Hall lbw for one then Gluyas went part way to erasing the memory of his duck when he took the wicket of Barker for 12 thanks to a good catch from wicket keeper Heap.
But by the time Chris Leeming joined Adam Jarrett at the crease he obviously thought that it was time to wrap up the win and he hit two mighty fours off Khan to seal the victory with four overs to spare.
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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