Larne First Eleven, who are sponsored by the Curran Court Hotel, suffered heartache at the weekend when they lost to Ballymena by 1 run off the final ball of the match.

The day began with Larne winning the toss and it was an easy decision to put Ballymena in on an extremely green Eton Park wicket. The bowling was opened as usual by Robert McClean and Ballymena old boy Jonathan Craig, and they frequently troubled the opening batsmen without getting any reward. Conrad Du Toit was then brought into the attack and made an immediate impact when he took a sharp return catch off his first delivery.

He was partnered from the other end by Paul Ramsay and this pair applied severe pressure over the next 20 overs as they reduced Ballymena to 50-4. Ramsay bowled with great accuracy and restricted the batsmen to very few runs while Du Toit picked up 3 more wickets to finish with figures of 4-18. From this point Ballymena began to rebuild and a partnership of 71 followed between Williams and Glass. Williams had just passed 50 when the partnership was finally broken by McClean and Larne took the final 5 wickets for 20 runs as Ballymena were dismissed for 141.

Keith Aiston had been given the ball and collected 2 wickets with his seamers, while Craig also returned to grab 2 wickets courtesy of a fine stumping by Trevor Dempsey and a sharp catch by Alan McKee.

The Larne innings was opened by Gareth Alexander and Steven Gorman and the first 10 overs proved a test against a fine opening bowling attack. Both then began to find some form before Alexander was run out going for a dicey second run. Gorman was joined in the middle by Du Toit and this pair looked comfortable against the spin bowling as they began to push the run rate up.

Gorman was now into his stride and was hitting some lovely straight drives along with a couple of sweep shots, while Du Toit was pushing singles but was not slow to punish the bad ball as he hammered one massive six. The partnership was broken by another run out when Du Toit failed to make his ground and from here Larne suffered a middle order collapse as they slumped to 88-5. Gorman was bowled for a fine 44, Aiston was the victim of a freak run out and Craig was caught behind as it appeared that the game was beginning to slip away from Larne.

The run rate had also crept up above 4 but David Tweed and Trevor Dempsey set about swinging the game back in Larne’s favour. They played very sensibly and managed to push the ball in to gaps off most deliveries, as well as finding the boundary when the opportunity arose. The score began to creep towards the target off 142 and when Tweed struck an enormous straight six Larne required only 9 runs from the final 3 overs and seemed set for victory.

However, the next 2 overs yielded only 2 runs and included the wicket of Dempsey who was brilliantly caught on the boundary for 24. It all meant that Larne required 7 off what will go down as one of the most bizarre and eventful final overs of any game. It began with McKee being trapped LBW and McClean getting a single off the 3rd ball to leave 6 required from 3 balls with Tweed on strike.

The next ball was pitched up and when Tweed hammered it straight back it rebounded off the stumps and hit the umpire square on the forehead as a certain boundary was accidentally prevented. As the umpire was taken to hospital for stitches, it was declared that the previous ball should be declared a dead ball and so the situation remained the same.

The next ball was creamed by Tweed over extra cover and once again the Larne players were on their feet only to see the ball plug on a sandy area of the outfield and bring only 2 runs. A run followed from the next delivery to leave McClean needing 3 to win from the final ball, but a scampered leg bye meant that Larne were denied a deserved victory by the margin of 1 run.

Although the players were gutted after the match they can take heart from the fact that they are now competing with teams like Ballymena in section 2 of the League.

The match ball was sponsored by Bank of Ireland.