Cumbria have experienced a mixed bag of results in their National Counties Twenty20 series.
They had started last week with two victories against Northumberland but have followed-up with a rain-off at Netherfield against Shropshire and two defeats in Cheshire.
The two games against Cheshire were played at the Toft cricket club and Cumbria were beaten by 17 runs and then by five runs.
Cumbria had won the toss in the opening contest and opted to field, which seemed a good decision early on with Cheshire 23-2.
But Sam Perry hit a rapid 54 off 39 deliveries, and included were eight fours and a six, while there was good support in the middle order from Alex Money (42no from 26 balls) which took them to 147-6.
Spinner Nico Watt was Cumbria’s most successful bowler with 3-16 from his four overs while Lancashire star Richard Gleeson, again testing his fitness on Cumbria duty, had 1-17 from four.
Although they lost Sam Dutton at 18, new skipper Michael Slack (54) and his predecessor skipper Gary Pratt (25) took them on to 59-2 before they were parted.
Slack tried to play the anchor role as he was eighth out but there weren’t many runs lower down the order and Cumbria finished on 130-8.
The second game was tighter with Cumbria falling six runs short of victory after another good knock from Pratt (37).
Unfortunately there were only brief glimpses of Cumbria’s batting talent with Nathan Waterston (17), Paul Hindmarch (16) and Gleeson (16) all getting a start but not able to explode.
Michael Finan took 3-20 for Cheshire as Cumbria fell just short of their target.
Cheshire, who had again been put in to bat, had posted 135-8 in their 20 overs with opener Robert Sehmi (46) and Harry Dearden (33) top-scoring.
Gleeson had 2-10 from four tight overs while Keswick’s James McGown took 2-16 and Matthew Sempill took 2-33.
