WARREN Goodwin relished the role of captain as Chester Boughton Hall made it two Premier Division wins on the spin on Saturday.
Goodwin, taking over for the first time in the absence of Jim Gilson, smashed a top score of 58 to inspire the Filkins Lane outfit to a hard-fought three-wicket victory at Didsbury.
Other than the Cheshire county star, no other batsman got to grips with a difficult pitch with Maroof Khan (3-35), Alex Kegg (3-58) and Jack Williams (2-35) limiting the winless hosts to 141.
Goodwin shared a fourth-wicket stand of 38 with Ollie Law to haul the visitors within 33 runs of their target when he was dismissed.
Williams then dug out a useful 11 before Mike Robinson and Matt Griffiths ensured nervy Hall reached 142-7 with four overs to spare.
Defending champions OULTON PARK maintained their 100% winning start to the season with a nail-biting one-wicket triumph at Nantwich.
Chasing a total of 224-8dec (Guy Emmett 3-38, Chris Jones 2-29), Nathan Dumelow’s table-toppers got off to a flying start as Louis Bentley (80) and Ric Moore (67) let loose.
Nantwich were not finished yet, though, and Park’s last pair were left to scramble the winning run off what the umpires had announced would be the final delivery of the day with rain falling.
NESTON are one place behind in second after they returned to winning ways with a six-wicket home success over previously-unbeaten Toft.
Aussie Brad Rasool (87no) fired Neston to 153-4 in reply to 150 (Jordan 3-12, James Hawley 3-26).
CHRISTLETON are rooted to the bottom of Division One after they went down by two wickets at Cheadle to stretch their winless start to the campaign to three games.
Only David Bates (66) got going with the bat as Paul Allen’s men were polished off for 120. Despite the best efforts of Guy Newell (2-11), skipper Allen (2-23) and Iroshan de Silva (2-33), high-flying Cheadle then made it to 124-8.
TATTENHALL had to settle for a high-scoring Division Two draw with Sale.
The visitors put on 217-9dec, with Craig Williamson (4-88), Andrew Morris (2-33) and Gary Forster (2-42) doing most of the damage, before Paul Kettle (54) and Angus Stewart (53), following good work from openers John Hope (41) and John Gibbon (30), took the Flacca boys as far as 206-6.
Tattenhall had lost in the first round of the league’s Twenty20 Cup in midweek at Neston, for whom captain Jack Smith flayed 122 off just 64 balls – an incredible knock which included 15 fours and three sixes.
