CLEOBURY Mortimer skipper Ed Kemp hailed his nine-man side for securing Marches League top-flight survival – even though it came at the expense of cup glory.

With rain washing out Mortimer’s League Twenty20 Cup semi-final at Garnons a fortnight ago, they decided to make last weekend’s trip to the Byford-based side a double-header.

And while Cleobury slipped to a six-wicket defeat that ended their hopes of reaching the final, they did pick up four valuable league points to secure their Marches League Division One status.

With a couple of long-term injuries, availability has been a problem all season but Kemp paid tribute to the dedicated troops that have kept Cleobury up.

He said: “It would have been easy for us not to go – and at one stage it looked like we might only have eight – so credit to the nine who made the effort.

“Priority number one on Saturday was to get some points on the board – the cup was an added bonus – and as far as the league goes, we have done our job.

“We have seven or eight who play every week and a few others who rotate – but those are the ones who have saved our club, because we couldn’t turn up with seven every week.

“Sometimes they travel an hour and half away to not even get a bat and that’s the commitment you need when you are a one-team club.

“No one gets on each other’s backs about it – if we have only got nine players, we just give it a go.

“We have struggled a bit this season – the league table doesn’t lie – but we have beaten a couple of decent teams on our way to the semi-final.

“We have only been outplayed by two teams all season – the rest of the games we have had chances to win. We haven’t been getting thrashed. We just lack a bit of depth.”

A patient 64 from opener Nick Griffiths, supported by an unbeaten 30 from Harry Booton helped the nine men post 157.

And some early wickets from Sam Evans (2-30) gave Cleobury a sniff of a miraculous upset, only for a couple of dropped catches to prove crucial as Garnons got home at 163-4.

Kemp added: “Nick’s innings was one of the most patient I have ever seen and Harry was batting at five, up from nine, so we needed players to stand up – and they did.

“But we dropped a couple of catches when Garnons were four down. But with nine men and gaps in the field, we were in the game for a long time and we have to take a lot of credit for that.”

The skipper did not regret the decision to make the game count double, adding: “We would have to had to play the cup game on Sunday and we didn’t want to go down there twice in two days.

“But it is a shame we had to play it all in one go and that we only had nine players because we had a half-decent team out when the game was originally supposed to take place.”