Cricket - CHAMPIONS Bury closed their Gibbs Denley East Anglian Premier League season with a win over Mildenhall in a shortened 40 overs-a-side Suffolk derby.

Cricket

CHAMPIONS Bury closed their Gibbs Denley East Anglian Premier League season with a win over Mildenhall in a shortened 40 overs-a-side Suffolk derby.

The half-points match unsurprisingly saw runaway league leaders Bury destroy the Mildenhall batting response, bowling the visitors out for just 85 runs with little under five overs to spare.

Bottom-placed Mildenhall will, however, draw some positives from their bowling performance in which they limited Bury's line-up to just 138 for eight.

Mildenhall will now face Great Witchingham of the Norfolk Alliance in a relegation/promotion play-off on September 9.

Mildenhall vice-captain Jonathan Woods said: “There does tend to be a big gulf between the sides contesting the play-off, but you never know what can happen in one -day cricket.

“We will need to dig in and perform, which we just haven't done this year. While we've done reasonably well with the ball, we just haven't got the batting at the moment. Look at the weekend - we couldn't even get near Bury's 138.

“In the (play-off) final I would certainly prefer to see us bat first and try and put a big total on the board.”

And looking ahead at the future of the club, Woods added: “We need to get our lower teams better because at the moment the players moving into the first team are finding the step up of four leagues too big.

“We'll definitely be looking to recruit two or three more older heads once this season is finished.”

Elsewhere in the EAPL, Clacton finished third with a 103-run win over Norwich. who ended up in sixth.

Martin Smith tore through Norwich's opening batsmen as they chased a score of 214, removing three men out of the top four of the order.

Swardeston took the runners-up spot after taking 17 points from a home draw against Fakenham, who finished eighth.

Richard Sims (121) and Jaden Hatwell (104) both scored centuries for the home side who racked up 339.

In the final league fixture, Horsford and Vauxhall Mallards played out a draw to finish fifth and seventh respectively.