Cricket: Saltaire won the Sovereign Health Care Priestley Shield in a memorable final at Pudsey Congs yesterday.

They beat Cleckheaton by two wickets with three balls to spare in a dramatic finish.

And the win helped ease the pain of the their first team's impending relegation from Division One.

Their hero was 17-year-old Daniel Petty who hit the winnings runs in the gathering gloom.

Chasing 230 to win, Saltaire needed 29 off the last five overs with four wickets in hand, but lost Jai Mistry at 212 and Will Burgess at 218 as they edged nearer their target.

They were on the verge of victory with just seven runs required off the last two overs, but managed only two off the penultimate over to leave themselves with a potentially tricky target of five from Guy Blackshaw's final over.

Duncan Robinson scored a single off the second ball and when Petty played the third through the slip area to third man there looked to be only two runs in the shot, but a misfield on the boundary edge handed victory to Saltaire.

Petty said: "The bowler bowled me a long hop and although I didn't see the ball that well, I managed to slice it over the slip area.

"It should really have been two, but I was just turning to go for a second run when I saw the ball going over the boundary."

Earlier, solid batting by Richard Evans (57), Chris Jackson (46) and Matthew Evans (39) had enabled Cleckheaton to total 229 for seven.

Saltaire lost two wickets for 57, but a third wicket stand of 58 between top scorer and man of the match Duncan Thorne (57) and Steve Haley (23) put them back on track before they lost three wickets for 17 runs to give Cleckheaton a slight advantage.

A seventh wicket stand of 42 between Mistry (33) and Burgess (24) then took them to within 18 runs of a victory they duly clinched.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.