Milnrow Professionals 1996-2008

Craig Philipson	Karl Brown	Paul Wiseman

Milnrow finished in mid-table after another disappointing campaign in 2007. 19 year old professional Karl Brown was the shining light with 1378 runs in 21 innings in an otherwise damp squib of a season which saw 13 of the team's matches rained off. Countless more matches were rain-affected, non more so than the torturous Wood Cup quarter final against Walsden which spanned 3 weeks due to persistent rain and waterlogging. Even though the potential shown by many players in the previous season wasn't built upon, had the team won the 4 matches which they lost by 13 runs or less due to batting collapses, they would have bettered their sixth place finish of 2005. Memorable examples were losing 7 wickets for 3 runs whilst chasing Oldham's 126 and failing to overturn Radcliffe's 257 after Karl Brown and Danny Pawson had put on 172 for the first wicket.

Milnrow struggled to string wins together in 2006 and languished near the bottom of the league for much of the season. Despite posting some challenging totals, Milnrow's bowling attack wasn't strong enough to defend them in many matches and this proved to be their downfall. The most memorable example of this was when Royton chased down Milnrow's 303-3 dec with the loss of only one wicket and with seven overs to spare. Queenslander Craig Philipson, who was signed mainly as a batsman, posted four big centuries on his way to scoring over 1200 runs in a season for the first time since Dexter Fitton in 1997.

Kiwi, Paul Wiseman, did an excellent job in 2005 as the team finished in sixth place. Paul who was understudy to Daniel Vettori in the national team at the time, took 64 wickets at a miserly 14.8 runs each. He would have posted even better figures had it not been for an interuption half way through the season due to a call-up to the New Zealand squad for a tour of Zimbabwe.

South African, Wade Wingfield was signed in 2004 after gaining experience of Lancashire club cricket with Nelson. Batsman Shadab Kabir, who had been called into the Pakistan World Cup squad the previous year, was signed in 2003. Both seasons saw disappointing performances in the league in a time of re-building at the Club. However, despite having a young and inexperienced team, Milnrow reached the final of the Wood Cup in 2003, losing to Heywood.

Clinton Perren	Dexter Fitton	Wade Wingfield

Aussie Clinton Perren joined the Club in 2002 after successful spells with Littleborough and Rishton. He never quite hit the standards that he set at Littleborough, where he returned for the next two seasons, topping the batting averages in 2004 with an incredible batting average of 106.

As the above figures suggest, Milnrow have struggled to find an allrounder to replace Dexter Fitton whose four years as professional yielded almost 5000 runs and over 250 wickets.

[Link to all professionals]