OF the five important matches involving Bolton sides last Sunday, four were won, and I suppose that if we'd been offered four out of five prior to the event most of us would have taken it writes Peter Stafford

First thing on Monday morning I rang Tom Boardman to find out how the Association had fared at Fleetwood.

"We won," he said in an excited tone. "Oh no!" was my unthinking reaction. Let me explain quickly that my disappointment lay, not in the fact that Rob Faulkner's side had won, far from it, but rather that we, the Bolton League, had "reneged" on our side of the bargain, and, in so doing, had failed to provide the cricketing public of Bolton with a final that would have meant so much to everyone.

Indeed, of the five games in question, the Association's win was almost certainly the most noteworthy. The Northern Premier League are notoriously difficult to beat on one of their own grounds, if only on account of the hard, firm wickets which, generally speaking, are fairly alien to Bolton players.

Obviously, the three heroes were Stuart Knowles, Tony Kelly and Brett Collins, who twice made his mark on the game with the ball in two separate spells. Here's hoping they are able to repeat their triumph of 1999 at Atherton next month.

When later in the morning, I heard that Kearsley and Walkden had dealt further blows to the Northern Premier League's immediate future, I spent the remainder of the day trying to think of some excuse to ring my friend Norman Brown, their League Chairman, but sadly my imagination let me down. My gloating is on hold, although with Netherfield still involved in the Thwaites LCB competition, I may be better advised to give it another week or two!

Kearsley's win obviously owed a huge amount to Steve Davies' unbeaten 117. Simon Thomson's half-century contributed to a second wicket stand of 127, and Darron Foy's quick-fire 40 was later turned into an excellent all-round performance when he took four for 37. The Springfield Road side seem to have put last month's troubles firmly behind them, and they are a far cry from the team which took a meagre five points from three consecutive matches.

Walkden must have been pinching themselves on Saturday night when, after having just completed their worst batting display of the season (with the honourable exception of Tony Keays) they realised that as a result they had moved to the top of the table! They pulled themselves together at Chorley on Sunday, however, with Doug Watson's 74 leading the way to a more usual 200-plus total, after which two cheap wickets apiece from Ingram, John Smith, Reidy and the deadly arm of Mike Bennison, saw them comfortably home.

Our 2nd XI Inter-League side, in action for the third time at Greenmount, squared the series against the CLL, when they came out on top by three wickets to take the newly inaugurated Warburton Trophy. The series now stands at 1-1, with last season's match tied. On Sunday, chasing a target of 190, the Bolton cause was boosted by Astley Bridge's Steve Entwistle, who, building on his unbeaten 73 against Kearsley the previous day, hit a match-winning 58 to take the home side to within striking distance. He was helped by Ian Edwards (33) in a second wicket stand of 58, and later in the innings Ian Senior and Dave Rushton made certain of victory by adding 44 for the seventh wicket.

Tonge's Stephen Holt produced the bowling performance of the day when he disposed of the visitors first three batsmen at a cost of just 19 runs in his 10 overs. Later in the innings Chris Lomax took three more to keep the CLL's total down to manageable proportions.

Somewhat ironically, our winning score of 192 for seven was almost exactly the total required by the senior inter-league batsmen at Milnrow. Chasing biggish targets is all about establishing partnerships but, sadly, the Bolton League side only managed one of any significance, that between Steve Parker and Dave Morris. It came to an end courtesy of a run-out of Clive Lloyd proportions by Middleton's Simon Brierley. His telescopic-arm pick-up and superb throw ended Parker's innings just as he was starting to accelerate, and when his partner was dismissed almost immediately (and how often does THAT happen?) it was the beginning of a fairly long drawn out end.

Looking on the bright side, Will Halton had quite a good debut. He took a valuable wicket, had a catch dropped, and at the end of the game looked anything but a Number 11 as he and Ian Taylor desperately tried to save a lost cause. And what about the performance of Taylor himself. In this article three weeks ago I mentioned that, against Kearsley, he had gone for over 100. Since then his five games have resulted in a further 26 wickets at six runs apiece. He now requires just another 26 wickets for a new Tonge record with a possible 10 matches remaining, while another nine wickets will take him into fourth place in the list of all-time Bolton League wicket-takers. Like Walkden's John Smith, he just gets better and better.

In Smith's last four games, his 47 overs have cost 92 runs, just less than two an over. Hard to think that the pair of them have a combined age of 80!

If you are a believer in the law of averages, we didn't really stand much chance against the CLL on Sunday. After the game Paul Rocca, the CLL President, remarked to me that it was a long time since they had beaten us. I checked when I got home, and he wasn't wrong. It was at Walkden 25 years ago almost to the day. I suppose we can't really grumble!