SIX games in, it would have taken a brave man to predict that 2013 would be perhaps the best in Bromyard’s history.

At that stage, six games without a win including five straight defeats, saw the Flaggoners Green club languishing near the foot of the Worcestershire League Division One table.

But a remarkable rally saw the club go unbeaten for the final 16 matches, including a record equalling run of seven wins, to claim runners-up spot, their best finish in 12 seasons in the competition.

Former Sri Lanka all-rounder Dinusha Fernando, who skippered the side, averaged more than 53 with the bat and returned six haf-centuries and one century on his way to an impressive tally of 749 league runs.

Nineteen-year-old Ryan Tongue scored two successive centuries and averaged 67.83 in an impressive first campaign and, with Edd Oliver, Eral Anderson and Ed Smith all contributing more than 350 runs apiece, the Bromyard batting proved formidable.

Veteran Pete Whittenbury topped the bowling averages with 22 wickets at just 12.14 but it was Fernando who was the leading wicket-taker with his bag of 48 victims showing him to be a key all-round presence in the side.

Paceman Greg Leighton and spinners Tongue and Will Yarnold picked up more than a dozen wickets apiece in a real team effort.

Fifteen-year-old Ian Bullock set a new Division One record for wicket-keeping dismissals with 22 catches and a stumping while the irrepressible Fernando set a new mark for outfield catches with 15.

Although youth largely dominated the second team, who finished in sixth place in Division Two of the second-team competition, their bowling was led by experienced Dan Mills whose 35 wickets at under 20 matched his haul from the previous season.

The third team, meanwhile, also enjoyed their best season in the Worcestershire set-up, clinching runners-up spot in Division Nine, while the Sunday team suffered just one defeat on their way to taking the title in the GB Liners Marches Sunday League.

Off the field, stalwart Jeff Bayliss received Herefordshire Cricket’s Rob Staite award for lifetime achievement and there was a visit from two former England captains, Andrew Strauss and Michael Vaughan who visited Flaggoners Green as part of Vaughan’s Chance to Ride charity bike ride.