Lady luck was unkind to Cheddar as the weather prevented victory at Mark with only 18 more runs required.

On a cold and gloomy afternoon Cheddar made their first trip to Mark’s impressive new ground and the home team chose to bat first on winning the toss.

Gareth Humberstone (1-32) made an early breakthrough bowling one of the Mark openers in the first over.

The home side then batted watchfully for the next 10 overs pushing the score towards 40 without incident.

However, the introduction of Golden Arm Richard Llewellyn changed things as he picked up his customary wicket in his first over and the rot set in for Mark.

Rob Mitchell (3-8) joined the attack and picked up three wickets in a fine spell of swing bowling that deserved more reward.

Llewellyn broke the back of the Mark innings as he continued to pick up regular wickets to finish with 5-15 from his eight overs, ably assisted by two excellent catches in the deep from Ben Peverall.

A slight flurry of runs by the Mark tail got the score up to 90 but Josh Mitchell rounded the innings off with the final wicket to continue his impressive start to senior cricket.

As the storm clouds gathered, Cheddar openers Richard Kent (23 not out) and Peverall (26 not out) set about chasing down the score in quick time.

They punished anything loose and the score raced along with the help of a few extras.

With the score on 40, the players were forced from the field due to a heavy shower and although 13 overs were lost Cheddar were confident of reaching the target in the overs remaining.

Thanks to the brand new covers at Mark, play was able to resume but Cheddar knew it was only a matter of time before the rain would intervene again.

So on resumption, the Cheddar pair put on 30 in the first three overs. But the weather was to have the final say and despite playing through the initial spots of rain in dark conditions, the rain became too heavy to continue with Cheddar on 73-0 from 12.3 overs, agonisingly just 18 runs short of victory.

The extra 10 points that victory would have secured would have been valuable to help climb the table but the team will hope for better luck next week when they welcome Stoke St Gregory to Sharpham Road.