Carlisle kept up their challenge for promotion to Division One of the Northern League with a six-wicket win at Edenside over Great Ecclestone.
But competing in Division Two for the first time this year, they are ten points adrift of the joint leaders, St. Anne’s and Euxton, with six games left.
At the end of the season, the top two sides will be promoted to Division One.
The visitors had won the toss and elected to bat, but might have regretted it early on as they were 7-2 after Chris Blythe clean bowled Nisanth Nisian (1) and Nico Watt had Alexander Rhodes caught behind without scoring.
A stand of 75 for the third wicket between Matthew Lawrenson (25) and Mohammed Fazil (70) got the visitors back on track.
But there wasn’t a lot of support, apart from Mohamad Nadeem (16), and when Fazil was sixth out, they had only reached 133.
In the end, the innings closed on 172-9 with the total boosted by 22 extras.
Ben Davidson (3-29), Johnny Westgarth (3-39), Watt (2-32), and Blythe (1-19) shared the wickets.
If Great Eccleston started badly, the Carlisle reply was even worse as both openers, Zephania Arinaitwe and Marc Brown, were dismissed without scoring.
But from 1-2, the city side rallied and gradually built up a winning reply of 173-4 in 43.2 overs.
Wicket-keeper Tom Benn (85no), professional Michael Slack (38), and skipper Ben Davidson (30) were the main architects of the home response.
Carlisle took 11 points from the game and will want to stay in contention for the top two positions, knowing it could go down to the wire with their final game on September 13 at promotion rivals Euxton.
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