Heavy rain meant just 26.3 overs were bowled at The Park, where Ross 1sts played hosts to league leaders Bartestree and Lugwardine at the weekend.

Skipper Harry Porter won the toss, asked the visitors to bat, and quickly dismissed both openers for ducks.

Inbetween the heavy showers the visitors third wicket pair of Chaplin 58, not out, and Russell, 51 then added 107 before Charlie Hiram bowled Russell, quickly following up with a second wicket, before another deluge caused the ground to become unplayable. The game had to be abandoned with the opponent’s score at 127-4.

Ross will be hoping that the sun will be shining on Saturday, when they entertain bottom side Cleobury Mortimer.

Meanwhile, the sun shone all afternoon in the West Midlands, where Ross 2nds put up a brave effort against second in the table Halesowen, before going down by 55 runs.

The home side batted first and with all of their top five batsmen making good contributions and the scoreboard reading 150-3 with 10 overs left, looked odds on to post a total in excess of 200.

However, the Ross bowlers fought back well at the death and restricted the home side to a final total of 184-8 in 45 overs. The pick of the bowlers was youngster Adam Davies, who bowled two excellent spells of line and length to finish with 2-27 from his 9 over spell.

The remaining wickets were shared by Richard Jeffryes 3-15, Laddi Singh 1-41, Allan Harris 1-42 and Tom Edwards 1-27 whilst Charlie Cole only conceded 27 runs in his nine over spell.

After losing Stu Tucker in the first over, Jeffryes and Edwards kept Ross up with the run rate and took the score to 37 before Jeffryes was caught at mid-off for 18.

Edwards mixed solid defence with some lusty blows in his top scoring 38, but the Ross batsmen were unable to develop any significant partnerships and it was down to youngsters Cole (with his highest league score of 24), Alexander Springer and Davies, that Ross collected a batting point as they took the score past 125 before finally being bowled out for 129 in just 32.4 overs.

In addition to the match fixtures for Ross 1sts and 2nds, a group of Ross’ finest cricketers assembled for a three-day trip to the seaside town of Torquay, on Wednesday, June 22nd. With a mixture of youth and experience, the squad were expected to deliver both on and off the field.