Tomorrow (Saturday) sees the one-third point reached of the Tolchards Devon Cricket League season and Ottery St Mary face a crunch game.

Their visit to Thorverton is a meeting of the two sides who sit in the bottom two places in the B Division.

Ottery suffered a fifth straight defeat when beaten by Shobrooke Park in a low scoring affair. The Otters, batting first, slipped to 13-3, but, thanks to an unbeaten 43-ball knock of 38 from number six batsman Harry Conway, 28 from Alex Clements, 22 from Rob Crabb and a tidy 36-run last wicket partnership between Clements and Tom Jeacock (16), helped Ottery close on 146.

Clements then held two early catches as two wickets for Joe Birch and one for skipper Will Harrison reduced the visitors to 8-3, but their overseas player, a hard-hitting Australian – took charge and went on to strike a 12-boundary unbeaten 74 to see Shobrooke Park to a five wicket win.

In fairness to the Otters, this was a marked improvement in terms of the overall team show, than they had dished up in their previous outing.

Skipper Will Harrison said: “had a couple of catches not gone down and had we scored a few more runs it might have been a different outcome, but overall it was a better performance” said Harrison.

Thorverton went down to table topping Bideford by a margin of six wickets. The Thors have won one, lost three and had one game abandoned this season so far, their one win was on matchday four when they scored 256-3 at Abbotskerswell who they then bowled out for 208.

In their other matches Thorverton lost to Ipplepen when they closed on 241-9 chasing a target of 251, they were abandoned at Tavistock, and, against Seaton they were bowled out for 149 chasing 199 to win.

With the Otters rooted to the bottom of the table on 27 points and the Thors next bottom on 43, defeat on match day six would leave Ottery already some way behind the other sides with just 12 games of the campaign to play.