CAPTAIN Zack Yarranton hailed Tenbury for blasting their way through a barrage of obstacles to remain on the coattails of the promotion places in Worcestershire Division Four.

Saturday’s five-wicket win at Halesowen III has the Penlu outfit sitting fourth, 13 points behind second-placed Bromsgrove after nine matches.

Tenbury had to make do without bowling sensation Aaron Morris and opening batsman Andrew Adams as well as enduring a series of challenges throughout the afternoon but still emerged with a comfortable success that builds on a solid start to the campaign.

“We went there without two important lads and lost the toss,” said Yarranton. “They decided to have a bat which you couldn’t blame them for because conditions were pretty good.

“They have a really small boundary so you can score plenty of runs and they went well. The opener lost the new ball around 12 overs in so we got chucked an old spare.

“It looked like it had done about 60 overs but we had to make the best of it. We got a couple of wickets and kept down the score, I was fairly happy with their total because it was the sort of venue where they could easily have got 300.

“We lost Paul Higgins in the first over but Tom Gloster rode his luck by getting dropped with Tom Pugh scoring well after not playing for a while.

“We were close to winning with plenty of batsmen to come after the first three so it was fairly comfortable,” said Yarranton.

“Chasing down anything over 200 is good, the pressure of any chase can make you crumble. I was just happy to get another win.

“Fingers crossed, we can take this into Alveley at the weekend, a game we cannot afford to overlook or take lightly in the build-up to playing West Malvern the following week.”

Ben Dunn (43) gave Halesowen a solid platform but Tenbury’s Matthew Jones (2-24) was instrumental in limiting any momentum from his colleagues prior to a middle-order renaissance.

Alex Jordan (34) and Luke Miley (65) gave the visitors plenty to ponder before Tom Gloster (2-40) got ride of Miley and assisted in tidying up the tail.

Halesowen finished on 204 all out but Tenbury’s response got off to the worst possible start when Higgins quickly headed back without score.

It was the only wicket taken by Imran Aslam (1-24) but he did bag five maidens from his 10 overs in an attempt to quell the onslaught that followed.

Tom Pugh (38) and Gloster (70) settled in with David Hunt’s 34 not out pushing Tenbury to their winning total of 210 for five with plenty of wiggle room. Miley (2-46) was the only man to take more than one wicket for the hosts.

The second team (pictured) beat their Himley counterparts by 37 runs. Tail-ender Owen Edwards top scored with 30 in an innings of 142 with the visitors dismissed for 105.