With the double completed last weekend, there was one final league game to play, against relegation threatened Widnes. The equation was pretty simple for the three teams at the bottom (Oxton, Widnes, Bowdon). If any of them won and the others didn't, they were safe, but otherwise it would come down to bonus points and potential abandonments.

With all the rain over the last week, it was no surprise that the ground had a few damp patches which delayed the start. Further rain followed, and we were only able to get underway at 2pm. Nick won the final toss of the year and chose to bat first, with only 35 overs a side remaining.

One of the overriding stories of the season has been the partnership of Yoz and Haf up top, scoring runs for fun throughout the year. They started off slowly with Widnes bowling really accurately at the start, only scoring 10 off the first 5 overs. However, two flicked boundaries from Tim switched the momentum. Widnes tried their best to keep Dids in check, but they never really looked threatening with the ball, and runs were easy to come by. Tim hit a delightful lofted six over cover, followed by planting one onto Wilmslow Road, and the 1s were motoring at 71-0 off 14. Tim reached a run a ball 50 to bring the score up to 100, before Tom too reached his 50 with a slog sweep onto the road. From the 18th over onwards (excluding the 33rd over), Dids didn't fail to score a boundary in each over, as the score raced along.

The opening partnership was ended at 181, their third partnership of 150+ this season (and amazingly Tim's 5th!), as Tom chipped to mid on for a fantastic 77. Dids kept going hard at Widnes' bowling line-up and the runs kept flowing. Tim had reached 94 and was looking like he was coasting his way to a 5th ton season, when he inexplicably smashed a full toss from spinner Tom Evans straight down the neck of cow corner. He'd batted so well and deserved another hundred, but it was still a brilliant knock and set Dids up perfectly for the last 9 overs, with the score 189-2. They couldn't quite capitalise as they might have done, as wickets started to fall quite regularly, but at the end of the 35 overs, we had a pretty unassailable 267-7. Widnes may have rued a pretty routine dropped catch from keeper Chris Kirby, as an 8th wicket would have brought them a precious extra point.

By now news had filtered through that Oxton's match at home had been abandoned. This meant that Widnes now had but two options of staying up. Win the game, or hope for a rain off and that Bowdon didn't beat Hyde. Two early wickets from Alex and it looked like they might have to settle for the latter option, James McCoy miscuing to cover before Aaqib Uppal clothed one straight to square leg. Opener Rohan Luthra didn't seem to be able to decide whether he wanted to chew them or get a move on, hitting 3 boundaries but also facing 8 dots in a row. At one point it looked like they might get exceptionally lucky, as the rain arrived again. However, it left just as soon as it came, and we were back on after losing 4 overs. Wickets kept falling, and Widnes never seemed like getting close to their required run rate. Luthra reached his 50, but once Will had drawn him into one shot too many, which was really well taken by James running in from the deep, it was almost game over. On came the part-timers, with Jonty bowling some left-arm leggies, Haf coming on for his first league bowl for Dids, and Sam bowling his medium pace. And after some, let's say "flighty" deliveries, Haf got one in the right area, which Evans ran past and was bowled. 137 all out, with 8.3 overs still remaining, and an absolute demonstration by the new champions in our limited overs strength.

As it turned out, Bowdon lost to Hyde by just 1 wicket, so it is them who get relegated along with Widnes, Oxton surviving despite not even playing on the last day.

Meanwhile 20 points for the win meant Dids collected 410 out of the 484 available points this season, or 84.7%. This is almost 5% more points than any team has achieved in one Cheshire 1st XI Premier League season. 11 league wins from 11 using a pink ball this season is an incredible feat, and just shows how well suited our team is to the format. But on top of that to only lose two league matches in a 22 match season is an incredible effort, last achieved by Hyde in 2014 with only 1 loss (albeit with 4 matches cancelled). To cap that off with the Cheshire Cup win last Sunday makes just about the perfect season for the 1s. Next season they will certainly be aiming to go one better in the T20 Cup, and a long run in the National would really put us amongst the strongest teams in the country.

Looking at the average tables tells the story of the season, with wickets spread around the whole team, but nevertheless, we have 4 bowlers in the top 10 for league averages and 3 in the top four. Nick topped the averages with 13.16, followed by Abhay and Will at 4, Liam is at 8 (minimum 20 wickets). In addition, with 1402 competitive runs for Dids this season, Tim has scored the most of anyone in Cheshire cricket this year, a truly fantastic achievement. Let's hope the Nike bat he switched to at the very start of the season holds up through winter nets!