Colchester are top of Essex Cricket League after victory

However, they must consider themselves a little fortunate to be 14 points clear of their rivals, having been assisted by Castle Park’s more northerly location and the weather.

Heavy rain was always expected late afternoon and it progressively wiped out all four of the other more southerly league fixtures short of the completed overs required to constitute a game.

Shrimpers make a triple signing ahead of Essex Senior League season

This meant that rivals Wanstead and Brentwood each took only six points from their abandoned games, whilst a win for Colchester provided a maximum of 20 points.

Castle Park was the only Essex Premier League location where the required minimum of 20 second innings overs were completed permitting the match result to be settled by the Duckworth Lewis Stern method.

The weather hence ensured an intriguing and highly tactical game.

After losing the toss, Hutton batted first and struggled to 188 all out. However, they crucially used their full allocation of 50 overs so taking considerable time out of the game.

With adverse weather predicted, and other fixtures already falling to it, at the interval nobody expected anything other than the fate of this fixture also being one of abandoned.

Former U's goalkeeper helps Essex Schools become national champions

For Colchester, Darren Eckford (2-32), Daniel Gladwell (3-58) and Liam Wheeler (3-33) had steadily chipped away the Hutton wickets, whilst Vikas Agawal (10-1-0-21) and Charlie Fernandes (8-1-1-28) strangled the run rate.

On any sunny day and requiring merely 3.78 an over, a routine Colchester victory might have been expected.

However, what Colchester now had to do was stay ahead of the DLS par score once beyond 20 overs, which is a surprisingly different tactical proposition.

Whilst never short of the run rate, Colchester lost two early wickets and hence lost important resources that are used in the DLS calculations. That put the home side in some early difficulties.

Arnie makes history after Commonwealth Youth lightweight title win

Frankly, the loss of one or two more wickets would mean the result might have favoured Hutton. DLS can be tactically challenging given nobody can predict when the heavens will finally open.

Third-wicket partners, Joe Austin (20 not out) and Simon Fernandes (54 not out) therefore had to dig in and accumulate at least another 50 runs without any further loss of a wicket, simply to repair the DLS deficit.

They were assisted by the Castle Park electronic scoreboard being one of the few in Essex recreational cricket capable of displaying DLS on an over-by-over basis.

This enabled them (and the opposition captain) to be aware of the progressive DLS status as the clouds rolled in.

FORMER U'S: defender joins fellow ex-U's pair at National League South side

Eventually, the threatened thunder and lightning ended the match with a biblical like deluge. No wonder the pair celebrated post-match with the scoreboard DLS Par signage.

Their unbroken partnership eventually reached 71 when the rain came, with the Colchester total on 92, a comfortable 25 runs ahead of the DLS Par score, hence a home win by eight wickets.

The league now switches from white ball limited overs to red ball timed cricket for half of the season.

This will further change the tactical paradigm, but this table topping points advantage is a boost for Colchester's title hopes.

Tyreece Simpson nets first international goal in World Cup qualifier

Colchester, who remain the only side with a 100 per cent winning record, visit Buckhurst Hill on Saturday.

Colchester's second XI game at Oakfield Parkonians was washed out by rain.

Colchester scored 189 from their allotted 45 overs with Subhash Perumal (21), Oscar Morton Morley (34) and Alankrit Sharma (30) the major contributors.

In reply, the home side were 95 for one but were halted on 13.5 overs when the rain interrupted.

Despite the scores being near identical to those of the first XI fixture, this game was abandoned (six points each) further illustrating how fortunate those at Castle Park were in squeezing in the extra overs.