March Town’s 13 year stint in the Tucker Gardner Premier is over ... unless champions Godmanchester do them a massive favour.

In the last game of the season, March suffered an agonising one wicket loss at Waresley. However, Saffron Walden II’s win at Burwell II meant the win would not have changed things.

Despite finishing second from bottom, March will stay up if Godmanchester win their play-off on Saturday to get into the East Anglian Premier League.

On the day, March were put into bat on a wicket providing early assistance to the Waresley bowlers and applied themselves well.

James Harradine led the way with 72, his top-score of the season, in the March total of 194-7, with further contributions from Ash Vodnala (28), Toby Nulty (23), David Hodson (21) and Tyler Phillips (20no).

March made early inroads with the ball - Waresley looked in big trouble at 60-5, but a sixth wicket stand of 98 shifted the momentum.

Stuart Mills, in the first game of the season, snaffled three wickets to give March hope, but the hosts made it across the finishing line. Chris Ringham finished with 3-45, Mills 3-19 and Vodnala 2-28.

Ringham said: “It was a good effort. We lost the toss on a wicket which was helpful to bowlers early on and batted well.

“James Harradine applied himself and provided the backbone of the innings. We were more than happy with 194-7.

“We had a pretty good start with the ball, taking five wickets before drinks. But after drinks, when we needed another wicket, we didn’t bowl as well as we could have and their pair batted well.

“Stuart Mills got us back in the game and if we could have got 10 more runs we would have had a good chance of a win.”

Ringham says everyone at the club is routing for Godmanchester to give them an unlikely reprieve on Saturday.

He said: “We’ve been in this league since 2001 and we don’t want to give that up so we’ll be more than lucky to accept a bit of luck.

“This season, we’ve had five or six chances to close out victories but a wicket here or a couple of runs there have made the difference. You’re talking about an extra 40 to 50 points - if we could have picked up half of them we would have survived.”