Malvern 215-6, Redditch 216-6.

MALVERN travelled to Redditch on Saturday and were defeated by four wickets.

Malvern batted first and found runs hard to come by on a slow pitch. Jon Dovey played the anchor role and hit a solid half century.

But it was Tom Poole who provided the fireworks, smashing the ball to all parts of the ground in a remarkable innings of 60 from only 32 balls, including seven sixes.

Malvern’s final total of 215-6 seemed to be a reasonable one and they took the field in confident mood against a side who previously had not managed to better 175 with the bat during Saturday’s Crusader Worcester shire League clash.

However, Malvern did not bowl well and, obviously encouraged by the seemingly endless extra runs that were coming their way from wides, Redditch took the initiative and did not lose their first wicket until 135 runs had been scored, there was a mini collapse induced by Adam Dovey.

But Redditch managed to eke out the remaining runs for a valuable win, a realistic opportunity to post a first morale-boosting win of the season had been lost.