KENDAL captain Stu Parkin was left cursing the rain as an immediate chance to right the wrongs of a heavy defeat to league leaders Blackpool was scuppered when the weather intervened to put a stop on Sunday’s Readers Cup semi-final.

The Shap Road outfit was skittled out for just 46 as Namibian professional Christi Viljoen ran riot.

Any chances of putting that result behind them, however, were quashed when the cup semi-final with the Lancashire Colts was abandoned before play got under way.

“After Saturday’s performance I would have been happy playing straight after because the lads obviously wanted to right the wrongs of the day before,” said Parkin.

“We wanted to get that game out of the system but now it’s back to the drawing board again.”

And while disappointed at the nine wicket loss to Blackpool, Parkin expects it was just a one off for tenth-placed Kendal.

“It was a short one,” he said. “It’s not often I’m home for 5pm on a Saturday.

“It was just one of them games. I think every team has a shocking performance in them and I think that was our day.

“We were blown away by Christi who is obviously a very good bowler.

“They bowled well on a track which did sort of help them. Winning the toss was one of the more vital tosses to win but unfortunatelty I lost it.

“All the rain over the last couple of weeks meant the wicket was really green and difficult to bat on.”

Blackpool are currently 28 points clear at the summit and look certain to win the league title.

“It showed their class,” added Parkin. “They can blow away teams which they have done a lot this year and do win quite a lot of games batting second becuase they’ve obviously got a decent bowling attack.

“We sometimes struggle because we have a batting professional and don’t really have that one main strike bowler.

“They are a good bunch of lads. I know Paul Danson (Blackpool’s captain) well and they have been building this side over the last four years.”

Kendal struggled to build any meaningful partnerships but that did not bother Parkin too much.

He said: “We sort of laboured our way. We didn’t losing our first wicket until the 12th over. Obvisouly it was a slow start but with the explosive batting we had to come I wasn’t too worried about that.”

Kendal host Barrow in the league on Saturday before taking the Colts travel to Shap Road for the re-arranged Readers Cup fixture.