Having finally reached the summit, the trick for Carlisle Cricket Club now will be to stay top of Cumbria Cricket League’s Premier Division.

The city side were comfortable winners against Lindal as Furness came unstuck at Workington.

Workington are a much more dangerous side with ex-pro Simon Beare in their team and he was in devastating form.

He scored 82 off 68 balls to pull Workington back into the contest as they finished on 195-9. Then, he took 6-29 as Furness collapsed from 52-1 to 76-8 and, eventually, 104 all out in the 35th over.

Carlisle played their part in moving top as they beat Lindal Moor by seven wickets with 10 overs to spare.

After losing half the side for 31, Lindal did recover thanks mainly to professional Janith De Silva (32) and they reached 123 all out in the 48th over. Phil Frazer (4-26) and Fraser Conn (3-23) were the most successful Carlisle bowlers.

Openers Ben Davidson (42 not out) and Mike Slack (30) put on 70 for the first wicket, and Alex Raybould (20 not out) was there to help at the end as Carlisle won on 124-3.

Carlisle must travel to Furness later in the month but, for the time being, are concentrating on the old maxim - one game at a time.

They will be unchanged for tomorrow’s short trip to Wigton, where they will take on a home side buoyant after a very good win at Millom last week.

Batting first, Wigton made 195-3 and that was boosted by an unbroken fourth-wicket stand between Matthew Reed (55 not out) and Theo Manihera (51 not out) after Andy Oliver (33) had been prominent early on.

Millom were bowled out for 146 with Wigton professional Chris Hodgson taking 4-25 off 13 overs and Ben Purdham 3-21.

Furness lost the leadership of the Premier Division but won the season’s first silverware 24 hours later.

At Haverigg on Sunday, in a rain-affected Higson Cup final, they beat Keswick.

Furness batted first and were 195-8 from their 45 overs with Sri Lankan professional Sachith Pathirana going on to make 83 after offering a chance, caught behind, when on nought.

At one stage, Furness were struggling on 125-6, but then, made a late flurry to set up a challenging total.

Unfortunately, rain during the innings resulted in Keswick’s reply being revised to a target of 137 off 25 overs.

That proved controversial and one senior Keswick official observed: “This is not sour grapes, but one must question why Keswick could not be given, if not the full 45 overs, more overs in their reply than the 25.

“After all, the game started at 1pm and only an hour was lost to rain - and a further query surrounded the decision to allow Furness bowlers the full allocation of nine overs each as opposed to a fifth of the 25 overs.

"This, arguably, created an uneven playing field.”

Gordon McCullough, who was one of the match umpires, said: “The Duckworth-Lewis method brought in by the league has nothing to do with the umpires, although we took a bit of stick.

“This rule and the interpretation is left between the two teams and one person is nominated as the custodian on the D/L App. They then inform the umpires of the revised target the team batting second have to achieve.

"It sounds simple but causes several disagreements.”

The league may look again at the system at the annual meeting.

That apart, Keswick should still have produced a better response than their eventual 95 all out from 24 overs with Arran Davies top-scoring on 21 and too many batsman perishing in the pursuit of quick runs as they tried to clear the boundary.

For Furness, Pathirana completed a man-of-the-match performance with a bowling return of 5-19 from seven overs while Mark Daly claimed 3-31 from eight overs.

Keswick had been successful on Saturday in the league with a very good eight-wicket home win against Cleator.

Cleator chose to bat but with few exceptions didn’t look happy and were bowled out for 107 in the 41st over.

Professional Supeshala Jayathilake top-scored with 42 but his only real support came from Doug Hughes (24).

Off-spinner Dan Gaskell was the main tormentor, taking 6-37 from his 13 overs. Keswick only needed 28.3 overs to reach 109-2 with opener William Atkinson batting throughout for 61 not out.

Keswick travel to Lindal Moor, hoping to continue their progress.

After their win over Furness, Workington will have a spring in their steps when they travel to champions Cockermouth, who will still believe they can catch the front two to retain their title.