SWANAGE 224-6 (19pts) beat BERE REGIS 223-8 (8pts) by four wickets

RELEGATED Swanage took a hard-earned four-wicket win over rivals Bere Regis in their penultimate Dorset Funeral Plan Premier League clash of the season.

Old adversaries from previous seasons in the lower leagues, the two sides played out a tight contest that saw the match concluded in the 49th over of the second innings.

Bere batted first after winning the toss and saw Matt King (0) removed by Mike Hernandez (3-39) in the first over.

Rob Cole (16) also followed soon afterwards before Rob Murphy (46) fell four runs short of a half-century as Ryan Norman (2-53) struck.

Bere skipper Rich Cole (23), Tim Goodhew (33), Rich Payne (33), Garry King (19) and Dave Griffiths (21no) all got starts but could not push on as Bere closed on 223-8 from 50 overs.

Early in their reply, Swanage lost openers John Lewis (6) and Tom Salmon (15) to King (2-45) and Payne (1-45) respectively, but regrouped thanks to the efforts of Simon Goldsack (27) and Craig Wells (42).

Murphy (2-37) struck twice to turn the screw but the Swans responded as Norman (50) and Elliot Baczala (49no) put on an 80-run partnership together to gain the initiative.

Baczala had David Goldsack (19no) as an ally in the closing stages, the pair seeing Swanage over the line to victory with just 10 balls to spare.

Commenting after the game, Rich Cole admitted to Echosport that injuries had hampered his side.

He said: “It’s disappointing, of course it is.

“Looking at it, I got injured during the game (knee), my brother Rob got injured (shoulder), and we were carrying a couple of injuries that got worse as the game went on.

“We were quite injury-hit to the point where we lost a couple of our bowling options.

“We were probably a bowler short, which cost us the game.

“If we bowled a little bit tighter we could have taken some key wickets and protected our score.”

He added: “It was quite tight. They had a big over of runs and without that it was going to be quite a tight finish.

“I thought we did really well with the resources we had available to us.

“It would have been nice to have been able to change a few things up as the game was going earlier on to give us more of an advantage.

“Unfortunately we didn’t have those options.”

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