PURTON skipper Aaron Lee saw his side drop another opportunity to secure their Wiltshire Division status with defeat to Trowbridge on Saturday.

During a rain-affected match, some poor fielding saw the visitors post a score of 228, before Purton found themselves in trouble with just 32 on the board for the loss of five wickets.

Tom Whittaker and Adam Woolford put on a sixth-wicket stand of 106 but it was to little avail as the weather and the run rate got the better of the home side as they fell to a 90 run defeat.

“It got very dark about 25 overs in,” said Lee. “We went off for 15 minutes and it was reduced by two overs and by the time we got to 40 overs it was so dark and then the rain started again - there was no chance we were going to get back out.

“It would have been very difficult for us to have won it from where we were, but we got ourselves in a very good position considering where we were early on.

“They probably got 50 runs more than they should have done in their innings.

“We dropped maybe five catches. It was an abysmal effort in the field again in terms of our catching. If you have got to get a team out twice every week it makes it really tough to take wickets and win games.”

Purton won the toss and elected to field, but the visitors, who were crowned champions on Saturday, made the most of the dry conditions, to set their hosts a reasonable target.

Tom Oakley (23) and Mike Reynolds (37) put on 61 for the first wicket before the former was trapped lbw by the bowling of Tom Bowler (2-39).

Sam Julyan came in and kept the scoreboard ticking over as he made 57 off 92 balls before being caught by Bowler off the bowling of Deepak Ramani.

Purton continued to take regular wickets with the Trowbridge batsman managing to get themselves in but none of the remaining eight batsmen could take their score past 20 as they set a target of 229.

Having made a steady start in reply, Purton were soon in trouble when Deepak Ramani was caught by Reynolds, off the bowling of Luke Seymour, with 22 on the board.

That signalled a Purton collapse as they put on just 10 runs for the next four wickets to leave the hosts on a precarious 32-5.

Whittaker (51*) and Adam Woolford (36) restored some stability but it was in vain as the weather beat them.