LEIGH CC travelled to second placed Bootle desperate for a win to retain their outside chance of winning the Liverpool Competition ECB Premier League championship.

They had to field first after losing the toss but had an early success when Ronnie Davis bowled home captain Ian Cockbain for 21 in the 12th over with the score on 29.

Lee Hilton and Ian Cockbain junior then put their side on top with some impressive batting as they took the score to 98 before the home captain's son was brilliantly stumped by Gareth Cross off the bowling of Dave Potter for a fine 38.

Hilton was next to go, caught in the deep for 41 by Steve Bailey off Steven Mullaney who bowled Chris Sainsbury two balls later to start the decline of the Bootle innings. Jo Angel and Davis soon returned to the attack and kept Leigh on top as Bootle subsided to 162-9 off 50 overs at which point Cockbain declared in the hope of bowling Leigh out and retaining the extra two batting bonus points.

Angel took 3-38 off 17 overs and Davis 3-43 off 17.

Early setback

Leigh suffered an early setback when Steven Mullaney was bowled by Kelby Pickering in the first over of their innings but Davis immediately took control and scored a superb 41 out of a partnership of 52 with captain Dave Dove who had promoted himself to open the innings.

At this point Sainsbury, who had conceded 26 runs off his first three overs, took over and claimed the wickets of Angel and Cross in quick succession to have the visitors struggling at 64-4.

Andy Batterley then joined Dove and these two quickly regained the initiative with some superb strokeplay that made the highly rated Bootle attack look quite ineffective. They put together an excellent stand of 98 to level the scores and set up a five-wicket victory.

Dove batted through for a solid undefeated 63 and Batterley was back to his best attacking form with 41 off 45 balls including eight fours.

Leigh must now beat league leaders Wallasey at Beech Walk on Saturday (12 noon) to maintain their championship challenge.

The toss to decide the venue of the Liverpool Echo knockout final was lost and this will take place at Bootle's Wadham Road ground on Sunday, September 15 at 11am.