DAVID Ormerod says he feels an enormous sense of pride after he reached the rare milestone of 1,300 Lancashire League wickets at the weekend – but the 44-year-old wishes his father could have been there to see the magical moment.

Accrington’s ex-Bacup seamer claimed the scalp of Chris Bleazard as his men took a giant stride towards the title with the win at Lowerhouse.

But Ormerod, known around the league as Dibber, admits the occasion would have been complete had his dad Alick still been alive to witness it.

Ormerod senior, a well loved and much missed stalwart of the league, died earlier this year and David admits he is still trying to come to terms with the loss.

“If you bowl for long enough you do get wickets but I am proud of the achievement,” he said. “But my one regret is that my dad is not here to see it.

“You know, I still look around the ground for him when I take a wicket.”

Alick would have been smiling down on Sunday when Ormerod removed Bleazard, one of the best batsmen the league has seen, to give Accrington a massive boost in the race for the title.

They have been runners-up for the past two years and Ormerod admits no-one at Thorneyholme Road wants a repeat – and believes Accrington can now claim the top prize.

“It has put a marker out for the rest of the season,” he said.

“We started well with the bat and equally so did they – but we know that if we get 200 on the board we are a very difficult side to beat.

“We are desperate to go on now and win the title, we don’t want that runners-up tag again.”

Of his record, which comes less than a month after Rawtenstall’s Keith Roscoe picked up his 1,500th scalp, Ormerod laughed: “I think both Kes and myself kept people waiting a while for the milestones.

“I have had to wait as I have not been bowling all that well recently “I am not a statistics person and I don’t look to those targets – but when they come along it’s nice.

“And to get Chris Bleazard for that wicket is special too. Blez is a class act, he always has been.

“He carries himself really well on and off the field and it’s always a prize wicket when you get him and we have always had a good old battle out in the middle.”

And Ormerod intends to carry on playing the game he loves for as long as he can and joked that Roscoe’s marker could be one to go for.

“I still enjoy playing,” he said. “I don’t want to become that sad old man in the field who just trundles in for the sake of taking a few wickets.

“But I will play the game until I stop being competitive - and hopefully that will be for some time yet.”