Stayley fall to defeat in Tanner Cup Final

Tanner Cup Final Stayley 177ao  Friarmere 178-4

The Tanner Cup, (the premier Cup competition for the now defunct Saddleworth League), has been reinstated this year with a view to maintaining a local competition and has featured seven clubs.  After a series of round robin games and a knock out semi final stage the final was held at Stayley where the host club faced Friarmere and the honours went to the visitors.  Longstanding SDCL members Friarmere were looking for the title for only the second time in their history, having previously won the competition in 1971.

Batting first Stayley got off to steady start and reached 46-1 before pro Munir Tanzil fell.  Thereafter the Friarmere attack kept pegging away and despite decent starts for a number of Stayley batsmen, (Andrew Gleave top scoring with 41), no-one managed to really press on and they were dismissed for 177, (3 wickets each for Abid Hussain and Mohammed Kamran).

In a season where silverware and success has been plentiful with good all round team performances Adrian du Toit has starred for Friarmere, scoring nearly 1,200 runs in GMCL games.  He showed his mettle once in again in the reply.  Batting throughout he finished on 83* and together with Mohammed Waqas, (62*) took the visitors to a comprehensive 6 wicket win despite a decent return of 3-35 from Tanzil.

The win made it a great season all round for Friarmere whose 1^st and 2^nd teams won their respective league titles and it was complemented by a strong showing at junior level as well.  It has certainly been a great comeback for them after struggling through some difficult years in the none too recent past.

By Martin Frost