WINTERTON brushed aside a depleted Brooke A as they maintained their promotion push in their first season in the Norfolk Alliance.

Brooke were a number of players short and were asked to bat first on a good-looking wicket in the Division Five encounter.

Openers J. Willis and Paul Daynes looked comfortable early on and were quick to punish the short and over-pitched ball before a loose drive saw Willis become Ben Utting’s first wicket of the afternoon for 10. M Warner followed next ball when he was bowled leaving a straight one reducing Brooke to 28 for 2. That became 41 for 4 as Richie Larner chipped in with two wickets.

The Brooke innings never recovered and they lost wickets regularly with only skipper Daynes showing any resistance with 47 before he became another victim of Larner who finished with 5 for 43.

Charlie Lockhart replaced Utting (2-31) and bowled with pace to take 2-5 and help dismiss Brooke for just 100 inside 28 overs.

Winterton’s opening batting pair of Josh Austin and Ryan Edmonds started slowly but their patience paid off as they took advantage of the bad balls on offer to take the score to 52 before Edmonds was caught behind for 16. Geoff Roper followed soon after for 7, becoming J.Willis’ second victim.

It was left to Martin Witheridge (21 not out) and Austin to complete his 50 to see Winterton home by eight wickets in the 25th over and maintain their third place position in the table.

n WINTERTON A welcomed Norwich Bystanders to the Hambrook Oval on Saturday, looking for a win to keep them in the hunt to win the Division Four title. With overhead conditions looking like they would trouble batsmen early on, the away skipper made an interesting decision to bat upon winning the toss. R Whalen and A Goel opened the innings and put the score up to 35, before Holsworth had Whalen (19) caught well by Lee Snowling at cover. C Misrah could only add 6 before he was clean bowled by the returning Andy Thackeray. A Goel (19) became Thackeray’s next victim, caught sharply at gully by Mark Hambrook.

With the Bystanders score on Nelson, the fourth wicket fell, T Norman (29) caught behind by Jonno Stanhope-Smith off the bowling of Tom Whichelow. D Asker was then clean bowled by Matthew Stanhope-Smith for a duck.

D Ingram had added a personal score of 29 before he too edged behing to Stanhope-Smith off Whichelow. Whichelow then bowled Nigam, before Thackeray cleaned up the tail, who only managed to add 4 between them. This brought up Thackeray’s 5-fer and left batsman Nagarajan 47 not out off just 38 balls.

Chasing 182, Winterton’s batsmen knew that they needed to get off to a good start.

With Dan Crawley and Mark Hambrook opening the innings the run rate was slow, before Hambrook decided to go after the Bystanders bowling.

With the score on 72 Crawley was run out for a well-earned 35. Step up the younger Nicky Crawley, who hit some massive sixes and kept the scoreboard ticking over.

Hambrook brought up his half century with a crunching straight drive for four and Winterton were cruising to victory.

Nagarajan got his team’s second wicket when he clean bowled Hambrook, who was trying to stay positive and smash the ball to all parts. Drewitt (15 no) and Crawley (49no) knocked off the final few runs with ease to see Winterton home to a stylish eight-wicket win.