The sun shone and there was a large crowd at Lanehead as Bacup made a fantastic job of staging Lancashire League's T20 Finals Day on Bank Holiday Monday.
In the first semi final Ramsbottom took on Church and made an impressive 193 for 5 with sub professional Ashar Zaidi batting through the innings for 97 not out and JJ Fielding weighing in with 45. This proved to be far too many for Church who were never in the hunt and were bowled out for 112 despite 64 from professional Adams and 34 from Wolfenden.
In the second semi final hosts Bacup took on Rishton. Some excellent bowling by Bacup meant that Rishton struggled to 102 for 9 from their 20 overs. Bacup professional Serasinghe led the way with 3 for 7, whilst Bradford took 2 for 17 in an impressive spell.
In reply Serasinghe got Bacup off to a good start making 30 before three quick wickets put the game in the balance. However, a fine match winning partnership between Schofield (27 not out) and Ben Lord (24 not out) took Bacup comfortably over the line with nearly three overs to spare.
In the final Ramsbottom batted first and the Bacup bowlers seemed to be on course to restricting them to about 130 before losing control of the situation late in the innings. Ramsbottom went on to post a very competitive 159 for 6 with Zaidi (34) and JJ Fielding (27) again in the runs.
In response, despite 56 from Serasinghe and 32 from Schofield, Bacup struggled to keep up with the run rate and finished on 113 for 7.
So Ramsbottom captain Tom Parton received the trophy from John Henderson of JW Lees and nobody could deny that Ramsbottom were worthy winners.
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