'It all comes down to this' – Burnham's title dreams hinge on final day battle at Amersham

Burnham captain Adnan Shabbir

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After all the winter nets training, and a whole summer of league matches, Burnham’s title and promotion hopes come down to one game away to in-form Amersham on Saturday.

Win it, and they’ll take the Thames Valley League Division 1 title - having only been promoted from Division 2 last season. Lose it, and there’s a chance second placed Ickenham can nip above them should they win their game at Eversley, who themselves are battling to avoid relegation.

It promises to be a fascinating afternoon, and the weather seems likely to hold after heavy rainfall led to a series of abandonments last weekend.

Burnham managed to complete their game at home to Boyne Hill, just about bowling the required number of overs to defeat Ziya Mohamed’s men by 107 runs.

Reflecting on the game and the mood in the Burnham camp heading into Saturday’s game, captain Adnan Shabbir said: “Things have gone well in general for us but there was a game that we messed up against Eversley. If we’d won that match, we’d have been quite comfortable going into Saturday’s final game.

“Now it’s a must win game, Ickenham are keeping the pressure on but they also have a must win game against Eversley. I think the weather should be ok as well.

“Amersham is a good team. When we played them at home we won, but they are a good team. The only advantage we have now is that they’re not in contention to win the league anymore. So that could play in our favour. But it depends on their mindset. They might have a couple of guys who now won’t be able to play. But we’re looking forward to going out and delivering the best performance we can.

“Against Boyne Hill this week the situation was the same. We knew we had to win, and you could see that everyone was trying to give 20 per cent more.”

Having had the luck of winning the toss, Burnham batted first against Boyne Hill and made up for an error-strewn start to post a decent total of 232-all-out in 47.4 overs.

They then managed to bowl 24.5 overs of Boyne Hill’s innings with the visitors finishing on 78-7, someway short of the revised target of 186 they needed for victory.

“We got lucky winning the toss. We batted first and there was a time when we were struggling at 35-5 and it could have gone either way. We lost wickets in a cluster and that’s always been an issue, but we managed to put a decent total in of 235. We knew that when the rain came it was going to be very difficult to chase with the spinners we’ve got.

“The rain stayed away just enough to have the 20 overs. The rain came after 26 overs, and it never stopped. Boyne Hill wanted to make it difficult for us, but they weren’t really in the game. Credit to the umpires, they were on it and without their input it would have been very difficult for us to bowl the 20 overs we needed to get a result.

“We were looking at Ickenham’s game as well because when we were waiting to bowl, they were already through six or seven overs. We knew they were going to finish their game but if we didn’t, we knew we’d be done. It was cat and mouse but we’re still in it and Ickenham are as well. Let’s see what happens.”

Shabbir also believes Eversley can give Ickenham a ‘hard time’ on Saturday, having seen how well they played against Burnham at the Memorial Ground a few weekends ago. Eversley won that game by 41 runs.

He said: “Ickenham are a good side. We’ve beaten them twice this season, but they’ve been getting good results.

“We have a 12-point lead and they’re playing Eversley, but Eversley are a good side. We lost at home to them. They do need a decent game to survive relegation, I hope it’s not a dead rubber for them. Hopefully they can give them a hard time.

“There will be a lot of nerves given the situation, the league is on the line, and this league is very hard to get out of. There’s only one team that goes up. All that winter training and the games we’ve played this summer, it comes down to the final game now.