A TIMELY downpour helped Wiltshire secure an unlikely victory over Herefordshire in the Minor Counties Knockout Trophy on Sunday night.

Stand-in captain Neil Shardlow admitted his side were lucky to get through after benefiting from the Duckworth/Lewis scoring system. Despite being behind the initial run rate, a two-hour rain break left Wiltshire requiring another 51 runs from ten overs with five wickets remaining.

The visitors made light work of their revised target to win with three overs to spare thanks to a 32 run partnership between Shardlow and Richard Bedbrook.

Shardlow said: "I wasn't expecting to come with a win from there. They are a fairly strong side and on their own pitch they are pretty formidable.

"I felt a bit sorry for them, but that's cricket."

Wiltshire won the toss and put Herefordshire into bat at the compact Luctonians club. The home batting was solid, but unspectacular until former England bowler Martin McCague came to the crease. He bludgeoned a series of boundaries in a quick fire 57 as part of his side's 216 all out.

Debutant Toby Sharpe continued his good early season form for Corsham with 2-35 and formed an effective opening partnership with Kevin Nash (3-57). Bedbrook (2-25) and James Ashford Brown (1-35) were economic in their ten overs.

Wiltshire's chances of victory looked slim when the rain started falling at 62-5 with 16 overs gone. But after a couple of aborted re-starts, the visitors finally resumed their run chase shortly after 8pm.

Sharpe, who had been promoted to number five as a pinch hitter, fell for 12, before Bedbrook (39 not out) and Shardlow (10 not out) saw Wiltshire home.

McCague, now 35, showed he is still a dangerous bowler with 3-28 from eight overs, but the revised target meant he and opening partner Simon Roberts could not bowl again.

Wiltshire are now away to Dorset in the quarter-finals on July 4.

Shardlow hopes Wiltshire's good fortune will continue when they face Wales in the Minor Counties championship starting on Sunday.

He said: "Everything seemed to go in our favour. I seem to be a bit lucky at the moment. I'm handing the captaincy back to Russell (Rowe) this weekend and if anything goes wrong I will be giving him some stick."

He added: "We went into the game with five seamers, which was not ideal, but the cloud cover and wind suited them quite well.

"Kevin Nash bowled a great spell with ten overs straight off and in general we bowled fairly well. But we did bowl 28 wides so I would have been happier if we had reduced them to 180 or 190.

"It was not the biggest of grounds, but it was a fast scoring one. If the ball beat the fielder it was four runs. At ten past eight the sun came out and it was ideal for us because we knew we had five wickets in hand and needed 51 off ten overs."