Stuart Maher is relieved he has got the right kind of captain’s headache at Great Harwood. For the last two weeks the Harwood skipper admits it has been ‘who can I find to play?’ which has included calling people out of retirement and pulling in his best man for a game.

But now, as Harwood look forward to their Twenty20 semi-final against Settle at home tonight (5.45pm start), he has choices again.

"The holiday period has been a nightmare," said bowler Maher.

"I have moved up from batting at 10 or 11 to seven; I had to ask my best man Matt Houldsworth to play one game and call Paul Newton out of retirement.

"We had one game last Sunday against Read and I had 20 players unavailable.

"And, all the way down to the juniors, none of our teams won last weekend.

"The last fortnight has just been hard work."

But despite suffering due to missing players, Harwood have managed to stay fifth in the league table and have a full squad available for their big chance to win a trophy in the quickfire competition.

Victory tonight will give them a home final against Whalley, who knocked out Baxenden in their semi-final.

"I don’t know how we have managed to stay fifth but the fact we are is down to our pro Syed Shahabuddin.

"He is the reason we are fifth from top and not fifth from bottom.

"We don’t have strength in depth at the club and it was there to see these last two weeks where we have been 15-20 players down.

"We are struggling for runs and it’s lucky Shobby has been outstanding for us.

"But now it’s our big chance for silverware, it’s a competition we have historically done well in and we will be strong favourites against Settle.

"But they won a group which included Barnoldswick, Earby and Ramsbottom Cup winners Ribblesdale Wanderers, so they can obviously play a bit and enjoy this format of cricket.

"We do have some good strikers of the cricket ball though, which are more suited to the short form of the game than batting through 45 overs.

"We also have a game plan and we want to put a smile back and lift the mood around the club after the last two weeks."

It’s a big weekend for Baxenden as well as they face leaders Read where a win will be a huge boost in the title race.

They have refound some form after a blip and came through against Clitheroe on Saturday.

Pro Babar Naeem and Liam Riley shared 10 wickets as they protected Baxenden's 202-7.

Earlier Callum Waddington had made 65 and Mark Rishton 42.

Oswaldtwistle were desperatly unlucky to lose by one run to title chasers Barnoldswick.

It was a last ball win in a game Ossie didn’t deserve to lose after a stirring fightback.

Barlick made 230 with Gerard Metcalf and Imran Abid taking three wickets each.

Then young opener Oliver Jones (93) and professional Chris Cook-Martin (87) provided the foundation for Immanuel’s 229-5, including a stand of 182 for the second wicket.

Jones made 93 in 143 balls with 12 fours and a six while Cook-Martin’s 87 came off 81 balls with 15 boundaries – but they agonisingly fell a run short.