Wellington’s winter season at the county ground came to an end when they were bundled out of the Knockout Cup at the quarter-final stage last Sunday afternoon by a Sampford Arundel B team who played much the better all-round game.

Sampford Arundel B, who boasted a much more robust team that had been the case when the teams met in the league three weeks ago, opted to ask Wellington to bat first and this decision was shown to be the correct one as Derek Greenway trapped James Dyke in front to the third ball of the innings.

It got worse for Wellington as Greenway and Andy Wells reduced the Red and Blacks to the depths of 33-5 with only Stuart Currall left for Wellington.But Currall was equal to the task with a perfect knock of 54no as he single-handedly carried the Wellington innings to a more respectable 89-5 in 12 overs. Currall has been the shining light with the bat and his winter has been worth 476 runs, which is a new club record for an indoor season, beating by five runs Simon Rudd’s previous record of 471 in 1995-1996.

Kevin Symons bowled in an exemplary fashion for Wellington as he yorked Simon Allen with as good a leg-stump delivery as you could expect and Adrian Lee picked up the wicket of Andy Wells as Kevin Crout accepted a sharply dipping chance on the back wall, but Wellington simply did not have the runs in the bank to seriously threaten anything other than a Sampford Arundel B victory and Bill Townsend with 25no and Seb Coe with 12no sealed their team’s semi-final place.