Aston Manor 1st XI slipped to their second defeat of the season in Lichfield League Division One as they lost an exciting Church Road encounter against Hammerwich by 4 runs on Sunday.

Despite a superb spell of bowling by Christi Viljoen (5-21), the visitors reached a challenging total of 186-8 from their 40 overs with Manahoh Shmebi, Abdul Rahim and Chris Whittock claiming the other wickets for Manor.

The hosts fielded a strong batting line up, but were reduced to 41-4 by some fine early bowling from the visitors. A determined partnership between Sajaid Amir (32) and Shmebi (23) brought Manor back into the game, and it appeared that debutant Praveen Singh would prove to be the match winner until he was unfortunately run out for 43. With the game slipping away Steve Knowles produced a great old fashioned exhibition of ‘slogging’, but was finally bowled for 30 with only two balls remaining. Despite the best efforts of youngster Shaun Carroll to win the game with a six off the last delivery Manor fell 4 runs short on 182-9 in a match that provided good entertainment for the Sunday Church Road crowd.