WARREN GOODWIN celebrated a hat-trick at the Cheshire County League Presentation Evening.

The Chester Boughton Hall batsman received the Premier League Player of the Year Award, the Keith Belfield Memorial Trophy, for the third time having previously won the award in 2009 and 2010.

All 12 Premier league clubs submitted votes and Goodwin, who passed 1,000 runs for the fourth time in five seasons as well as scoring 565 runs for the title-winning Cheshire Minor Counties team, also topped the bowling averages.

He led the poll with 69 out of 133 votes cast, which was more than 55 per cent of the total, ahead of runner-up, Neston’s newcomer Will Evans, with 18 votes.

Former England batsman, Mark Ramprakesh, was the guest speaker at the awards staged at Mere Country Club.

Chester Boughton Hall captain Steve Ogilby was presented with the Premier League Trophy.

Ogilby said his club had had to wait a long time to finish top of the table.

“We last did it in the club’s Liverpool Competition days back in 1994,” he said.

“We have been in the Cheshire County League since 1998 so this is a first. 

“Perhaps we have Nantwich’s Andy Newton to thank for that ‘rallying-cry’ here last year, but whatever, we have played some positive cricket with a winning mentality. 

“Neston ran us all the way and I’m sure they will come hard at us again next year”.

The Chester skipper had a friendly dig at umpires: “I keep getting calls from disciplinary chairman Ian Greensmith urging us to smarten up our act. 

“But I’ve told him the umpires just don’t understand us. After all, I’m Irish and four of my players are from Birkenhead!”

He also claimed to have a young team, pointing out that only Alex Kegg had been alive when Mike Talbot-Butler brought out his first League handbook in 1975.

Meanwhile, Chester Boughton Hall batsman Bob Evans created a new second XI record with a tally of 1,119 runs at an average of  62.17 including two centuries.  It was the first time a second XI batsman had topped four figures since Widnes’ Tim Wearden posted 1,074 in 1998. 

Evans now holds the second XI records for aggregate runs in a season and the highest innings compiled in all Cheshire County League cricket - 218 not out at Alderley Edge in 2010.