District champions make perfect start to their hat-trick bid

Back-to-back maximum haul wins have given the champions of the District Invitation Winter League the perfect start to their hat-trick bid.

Chirk’s bowlers have ruled the long-running competition at the Whitchurch club for the last two campaigns and already look like being hard to catch.

Having opened on the back green with a 10-0 mauling of Calverhall, the Welsh border club’s stars repeated the feat against Adderley on Monday, Mike & Jordan Riley winning one of the two doubles games 21-6.

Chirk next play this coming Monday night against Elephant & Castle while last winter’s runners-up Crewe tackle Archibald Worthington on Friday.

Meanwhile, fellow Whitchurch club Bridgewater are working on their own winter project.

A spokesman for the club confirmed: “We hope to play round robin competitions every other Friday evening starting at 7pm and every other Sunday starting at 10am.”

Winter bowling in the town started with one-day round robin tournaments at District and is now booming across Shropshire.

Bandit Bowls

Played two, won two is the record of Shropshire No.1 Callum Wraight in the Bandit Bowls one-day tournaments.

The 40-year-old Castlefields king topped another fine entry at Norton in Hales on Saturday in what was the only action in county for the first time since the end of the ‘summer’ season.

Wraight beat county senior team colleague Scott Harries 21-15 in the final after beating young clubmate Jack Peach to 11 in the semi-finals as the Sir John Bayley star saw off John Lea 21-12.

“Once again we had an impressive 31 at entrants at the new Bandit venue of Norton in Hales - and even on a winter’s day the green played very well,” said BB chief Jamie Brookes.

Winner Wraight’s plan for this coming Saturday is a trip to Wigan for a one-dayer at Golborne with the 32-strong field including fellow big guns Chris and Josh Mordue chasing a £400 first prize.