In a remarkable finish to an exciting season Carlisle won the Cumbria League’s Premier Division title – despite not picking up a point from their final game.
Although Furness won at Wigton to finish level on points with last year’s champions, they miss out on count-back.
Carlisle had earned 15 win during the season to the 14 recorded by Furness, and that was good enough to retain the trophy.
The big disappointment for Furness, however, was they would have won the league by a point if they had taken a scorer with them to Keswick last week.
As they didn’t, and as per League rule, they were docked a point – and that proved so costly.
It meant really Carlisle were champions before a ball was bowled, for whatever Furness did they couldn’t go past them at the top.
There’s little doubt that Carlisle would be disappointed by a flat performance and a heavy defeat at Fitz Park, but the bottom line was they still picked up the Arthur Lamb Memorial Trophy as League champions.
Keswick professional Risith Upamal (94no) and Ben Sharp (50) were the mainstays for the home side.
They put on 108 for the fifth wicket and that helped Keswick to a 50 overs total of 201-5.
Professional and captain Michael Slack (2-35) was the leading bowler for Carlisle.
In their poorest batting performance of the season Carlisle were always struggling and Slack (21) was the only batsman to reach double figures.
They were bowled out for 71 in 29.3 overs with Paul Hindmarch (3-5), Dan Gaskell (3-31) and Upamal (2-1) the leading bowlers.
Not the way they would have liked to celebrate a title win but Carlisle will always say it had been won throughout the season with more wins than anybody else.
Furness must be kicking themselves about their lack of a scorer last week, as they finished the season with a win at Wigton.
Put in to bat Furness reached 204-8 at Lowmoor Road in their 50 overs led by the admirable pro Yash Dubey (92) and support down the order from Harris Woods (32) and Garry Thompson (22).
Wigton pro Chris Hodgson was their most successful bowler, taking 3-26.
Hodgson (54) was the mainstay, too, with the bat for Wigton with Flynn Manihera (22) offering most support.
But they were bowled-out for 152 in 40 overs – losing out by 52 runs.
The relegation issue also went down to the last match of the season and it’s Lindal Moor who will go straight back to Division One.
Both they and Haverigg won their final low-scoring games, with Cleator’s defeat sending them next-to-bottom.
Lindal Moor were at Egremont where they bowled-out the home side for 76 in 30-3 overs.
Matthew Hunter (23) top-scored for Egremont with Aseem Wadhwa (4-18) the leading bowler for Lindal.
Openers Paul Wilcock (34) and Callum McDougall (20) laid the base for a comfortable Lindal victory – 77-3 in 20 overs.
Haverigg needed to win to be sure of staying up and they did so comfortably against Cleator who were already safe.
Put in to bat Haverigg were dismissed for 39 in 24.3 overs with Jordan Postlethwaite returning the remarkable figures of 4-1-6-5.
Former professional Supeshala Jayathilake, who has subbed the last three games for Cleator, was the only batsman to reach double figures.
County batsman Freddie Fallows (35no), who plays for Kendal in Northern League virtually knocked-off the runs himself from 28 balls. In total it took 8.1 deliveries.
Workington lost third place when they were beaten by three wickets at Millom.
Batting first the west Cumbrians made a steady start with runs from Tom Fox (33) and Davis Mills (48) which gave a great platform for Adam Chambers to hit a quick 42no which took them to 188-6.
Callum High had the best figures for Millom of 2-32.
Millom lost early wickets and at 32-3 Graham Dawson came in and saw them through to victory with a masterly 56 not out.
He got great support from Tom Wilkinson (35) and High (26).
That left the door open for Cockermouth to sneak into third place with a comfortable nine-wicket win at home to Whitehaven.
Opener Matthew Harrison (32) was the mainstay for Whitehaven who chose to bat but were bowled-out for 97 in 43.2 overs.
Cockermouth’s county spinner Matthew Siddall took 4-22 from his ten overs.
The home side reached 99-1 in 17.5 overs to collect the win with openers Gareth White (51no) and Reegan Scott (38) putting on 94 for the first wicket.
