Local cricket: Rain of sixes brings emotional victory for Birkenhead Park over Northern

began the afternoon paying tribute to a teammate - they ended it by doing him proud with a stunning win over .

On the near-anniversary of the death of opening batter Josh Downie, who collapsed during nets aged just 24 last year, Park earned their first win of the season in the .

“There was definitely an emotional atmosphere out there,” said captain Tom Foster after his side’s six-wicket triumph on a glorious sunny afternoon.

“We just said at the start, we wanted to go out and play good, hard cricket - like he would have wanted really.”

It was a newly promoted side against the unbeaten defending champions - but from almost the first ball, you wouldn’t have guessed which side was which.

After Foster chose to field first, Alex Baker, a seamer who measures 6’5” but looms even larger at the crease, started with a full toss outside off stump but from then on gave almost nothing away on a wicket offering plenty of bounce to even a bowler of standard height.

A mere 37 balls later, he’d taken 4/11 and Northern’s top order were all gone.

Their dismissals were all culpable - Andrew Clarke and Chris Laker aimed identical swishy drives at rare full deliveries - but at the same time owed much to the relentless accuracy of Baker and Alex Harris.

Foster said: “We thought there might have been a bit in the wicket early, so I backed the two seamers and they set the tone beautifully and bowled great areas.

“Baker was absolutely fantastic - he really is a difficult, awkward bowler and it’s nice seeing other people have to bat against him, because it’s hard in the nets.”

Liam Grey dug in with a self-denying 41 but, once the opening pair yielded to the spin of Safi Abdullah and Khalid Wahbi - Baker finishing with 4/24 - the runs dried up.