CRICKET: A NIGHTMARE showing by Suffolk on Monday meant that the final day of their Minor Counties Championship match against Northumberland at Ransomes Sports Ground, Ipswich, was a brief affair as the visitors wrapped up a seven-wicket victory.

CRICKET: A NIGHTMARE showing by Suffolk on Monday meant that the final day of their Minor Counties Championship match against Northumberland at Ransomes Sports Ground, Ipswich, was a brief affair as the visitors wrapped up a seven-wicket victory.

It took less than two hours of yesterday's opening session for the north-east county to score the 110 runs they required for victory, despite some slight resistance from their hosts who grabbed two more wickets to add to their single overnight breakthrough.

Northumberland resumed their second innings on 29 for one with the bright sunshine combining with an increasingly calm wicket to give the visiting batsmen the upper-hand.

However, with the score on 44 Clacton's Gary Kirk found the outside edge of Adam Heather's bat and Bill Athey took the catch at slip to give Suffolk some hope of staging a remarkable fightback.

It was Kirk's 22nd Championship wicket of the summer, but too often he has had little support from his fellow bowlers.

That became evident again as John Windows and Bradley Parker began a match-clinching partnership, taking a particular liking to Paul King by smashing him for 20 from his two overs with the ball.

Windows, Durham's Cricket Development Officer, played the anchor role for Northumberland, scoring his 58 off 139 balls.

His vital contribution, which included eight fours, was halted when Chris Seal had him caught by Russell Catley in the slips, but by that time the score had reached 132 and just seven were needed for a comfortable win.

The partnership of 88 between Windows and former Yorkshire batsman Parker, who finished not out on 35, came in just 81 minutes and it was left to Steve Chapman, who also picked up eight wickets in the match, to steer his side home.

Suffolk took just six points from the game, but 24 hours earlier they would have been confident of securing a win which would have improved their position in the Minor Counties Championship standings.

Suffolk skipper Phil Caley, who achieved a personal landmark in the game by becoming the county's second highest run-scorer of all time, admitted that his side knew that they only had themselves to blame.

"We are all very disappointed at the result, but we know we let ourselves down with our batting in our second innings.

"It was a crazy situation as the wicket was doing a lot on the first day when we scored a lot of runs, but did a lot less on the second day when we collapsed," he added.

He felt that his players battled hard yesterday morning to try to make a comeback from the disastrous three hours of play the previous evening.

"The damage had already been done the day before when the whole game changed during their 10th-wicket partnership of 96," said Caley, "We could have been enforcing the follow-on but because they put on all those runs we let ourselves down when it was our turn to bat."