ABERGELE’s North Wales Cricket League First Division struggles continued with a 71-run home loss at the hands of Mold.

The visitors were on the back foot early on before eventually setting a target of 165 all out from 47 overs at the crease, with Usman Butt turning in his best batting performance of the season on his way to an impressive 54 from 70 deliveries, which included seven boundaries.

Other scores of note came from opener Richard Crane (24) and Wes Gillam (2), and the duo of John Crane (18) and Isaac Allen failed to build on positive starts during the middle portion of the innings.

Chetan Upadhyaya was the pick of the Gele bowling attacking, helping himself to four wickets for the loss of 39 runs, with the ultra-consistent David Moulson claiming three scalps at the expense of 41.

Despite restricting their opponents to a modest total, Karl Higgins’ men struggled for the majority of the time in the middle and made just 94 all out in reply.

Leading the way from a Gele perspective was opening batsman David Williams, who proved to be a stubborn proposition to remove on his way to 34 from 81 balls.

This was not replicated by the rest of the order, with only Lewis Tolond (19) and wicketkeeper Gareth Edwards (13) emerging from the game with any credit thereafter.

Richard Deniz put them to the sword to secure a five-wicket haul for the loss of 28 runs from a nine over spell, and Gele will be hoping for a better outcome this Saturday when they travel to basement dwellers Bersham.