STONE CUP SEMI FINAL

SWAY   154-2, MILFORD ON SEA  80. SWAY WON BY 74 RUNS

Sway travelled to Stone Cup holders Milford on Monday evening and beat them by 74 runs to reach the final where they will play  Hythe and Dibden at Lymington CC on Friday 16th July. The Alderman Stone Cup has been played for by the leading teams in the New Forest area since the end of the second world war - in the post war years the Stone Cup used to draw big crowds of sports starved fans and Sway will be hoping that there is a huge turnout from the club and the village

Ross Clark and Alex Hall opened the batting and set about the bowling from the off, Hall in particular crashing boundaries at regular intervals and at the half way point the score was 84-0. In the 10th over J.Brown (1-28) finally broke the partnership bowling Hall for 46 with the score at 87, Nilantha Atapattu joined Clark and these two kept the run rate moving. Clark went on to bring up an excellent half century before I.Lewis (1-21) bowled Atapattu for 27 with just 3 balls left. This did allow former Milford star Chris Hammond time to hit a four and a single as the final total reached 154-2 off the 18 overs.

Milford's reply never really got going as Rob Steadman and Steve Thistleton both picked up wickets in their opening over accounting for the dangerous P.Langford and W.Thorp as in contrast to Sway's start Milford were 30-5 after 8 overs, Steadman and Thistleton both finishing their 4 overs with 2-14 plus Hammond running out C.Bond.  J.Ferrar hit 4 boundaries in a quick 18 but the innings faded away to a final score of 80, with Atapattu 2-10 and Jack Walton 1-24 getting wickets before the rare sight of Dan Stevenson bowling was seen, unbelievably he took 2-10 to compound a bad night for Milford. 

A fine half century from Ross "Brickhead" Clark