PLYMOUTH beat Cornwood by three wickets at Mount Wise to lift themselves out of the Premier basement and put their rivals there instead.

The City side went into the derby date without a win in four starts and down to one off the bottom of the table.

Cornwood are now six points below Plymouth in the second drop spot, but with seven games to go there is plenty of time for that to change.

Cornwood made 226 for eight in their 50 overs – Stephen Lambert top scoring on 72.

Jackson Thompson made 48 at the top of the order and Mark Roca 22 in an opening stand of 66 that got the Corns up and running.

Plymouth needed to reign Cornwood in and did that as Joe Hagan-Burt (3-24) and Jack Hale (2-30) bowled effective spells.

When skipper Elliot Staddon went out to join Lambert, Cornwood had slowed to 94 for five at halfway.

Lambert batted through to the end of the innings, putting on 31 with Staddon, 38 with Matt Butterworth (19), 28 with Robin Dart and 35 in the final three overs with tail-ender Adam Goodliffe (17no).

Hagan-Burt and Hale were the pick of the wicket takers, but skipper Sam Stein will have been happy with 10 overs for 37 runs on his comeback after injury.

Ben Stein, the captain’s brother, bowled six tidy overs of off-spin for 21 runs.

Plymouth’ chase was set up by opener Hamish Gardiner with 53 and taken on by every batter who came and went, apart from Hagan-Burt, who was in and out for a single.

Anthony Atkinson (18) and Gardiner knocked off the first 72, the Jamie Walsh (36) took Plymouth to 147 for four in cahoots with Jake Luffman (18) and James Toms (28no).

Toms, dropped down the order to five after a low run of scores opening, batted out the game to win it with 10 overs to spare.

Hall Kerton (31) helped Toms wipe off 50 more and it was left to skipper Stein (16) to partner Toms on the last lap.

Stein said one win is a step in the right direction and hinted at better things to come.

“There are still things for us to work on, but we are back heading in the right direction again,” said Stein.

“We worked very hard in the field and with the ball on a hot day with a flat track.

“Joe Hagan-Burt was brilliant with the ball on his return.

We built partnerships throughout the game, Hamish and Anthony started us off well, then Tomsy and Hal Kerton kept cool and did most of the damage at the end.”

Losing captain Elliot Staddon felt it was a game that could have gone the other way had Cornwood bowled better.

“We didn't hit our standards with the ball and bowled too many four balls, which cost us in the end,” said Staddon.

“We felt at 226 we were maybe 30 light on the wicket but it was defendable.

“We got off to a good start but lost wickets in batches which didn't help us,

“Steve Lambert batted well and stuck out a good innings to help us get past 200.

“We managed to slow Plymouth up during the middle overs with the spinners but we lost it in the last 15 overs where we couldn't find our lines or lengths.

:”A disappointing day as we know we are better than we showed.”