ECCLESTON suffered a disastrous weekend against a resurgent Euxton from Chorley.

The firsts were away on Sunday and after winning the toss decided to make use of what looked an ideal strip by batting.

How wrong a decision that turned out to be as Euxton's South African import threatened to blast away at the Eccleston side with a fine display of aggressive bowling, on what actually turned out to be a very poor wicket indeed.

All the batsmen had trouble.

Eccleston, however, weathered the early storm but then contrived to lose three wickets with the score on 33.

Despite a gutsy knock of 32 from P Orford the only other's to reach double figure's were Burke (18) and skipper Matthews (12).

It meant Eccleston had to defend a very ordinary looking 100.

Eccleston's bowlers did their best but thanks to some inept fielding they couldn't contain Euxton and were finally overhauled in the 34th over for the loss of only four wickets.

P Ikin (2-29) D Matthews (1-9) and D Burrows (1-39) were the wicket takers.

The seconds faired even worse on a slow Bobbies Lane wicket.

Batting first, the home side were dismissed for a miserable 48.

What this could have been without a resolute 22 not out from K Smith doesn't bear thinking about.

No other batsman reached double figures, and Euxton reached the required total without loss.

Match ball sponsors were Detika Metals.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.