Wakefield Thornes slide down table after shock start against Appleby Frodingham

​The bowlers almost pulled the game round, but Thornes’ 140 total was always going to be difficult to defend.

After electing to bat first on a scorching day the Wakefield team had the worst possible start with James Wolfenden and Joe Billings out to the first two balls of the match bowled by Matthew Harris.

Shubham Sharma and James Rhodes followed cheaply and Thornes were 26-4.

They did recover a little through Kieran Donnachie (36) and Jawad Akhtar (34) while skipper Greg Wadsworth added 24 valuable runs later in the innings, but the 140 all out effort was still short of what a good score would have been.

Appleby Frodingham made a better start to their innings, but Thornes stuck to their task and at 91-5 and 107-6 the result was still far from certain.

But Jamie Brumby (34) saw the home team through to their victory with seven wickets down and 6.1 overs to spare. Matty Taylor (3-42) was the pick of the Wakefield bowlers.

It was a similar story for Wakefield Thornes seconds as they went down by four wickets to Rotherham Town firsts in the YSPL Division One.

Batting first, they made 151-9 in their 50 overs with Jamie Howarth hitting 36 and Junaid Yousaf 33.

In reply, Rotherham raced to their target in 28.4 overs as Matthew Fidler (40) top scored and there were two wickets each for Howarth and Adam Naz.