Instonians seemed to be the big losers when Nikolai Smith, first, stepped down from the captaincy, then a week later, left the club, but Muckamore aren’t far behind. Lisburn’s new signing has taken a liking to their bowling and in the space of 48 hours he scored 153 unbeaten runs to not only keep his club in title contention but all but end Muckamore’s hopes.

Just to ram home the point, Smith was the cool head at the other end when Shane Dadswell went berserk and scored 94, after Instonians had lost four wickets with only nine runs on the board, to win his first game of the season at Moylena.

It was Smith who dominated the scoring on his second appearance there on Saturday, finishing 94 not out as Lisburn chased down the home side’s 230 with four wickets and almost four overs to spare.

Coming to the middle at the end of the first over, after Aditya Adey had bowled Judd Markham, Smith was the immovable object as Lisburn made quite comfortable work of reaching their target and claiming the four points that keeps them within one win of leaders Waringstown with four games to play in the race for the Premier League.

Even when David Miller followed his opening partner three balls later – before Smith had faced a ball – there was no panic as Smith was joined by his new captain, Neil Whtworth. They added 74 in the next 13 overs to regain control of the match and although the partnership was ended by a superb low catch on the square leg boundary by Chinmay Dakhane, it was the always dangerous Ben Calitz who was Whitworth’s replacement.

Sure enough, the Ireland international was soon at his familiar work, hitting sixes for fun, four of them on his way to 41 before he went back to Neil Brand, who was on the receiving end of three of them, and was bowled.

Still the internationals kept coming, however. Calitz was replaced by Mark Adair making a welcome return for what was only his second club game of the season, although his solitary six was only of only two boundaries during his partnership with Smith as Jason van der Merwe and Brand assumed a measure of control for Muckamore.

When Adair (11 off 24 balls) was bowled by Brand and Nigel Jones by van der Merwe three overs later, suddenly Lisburn were 165 for six. Game on.

But Smith found a more than able partner in Ewan Wilson and, untroubled they added the remaining 66 runs with the only interest if Smith could get his century. With three required for victory, he was on 94 and facing Allen Coulter but five wides – not deliberate! – ended the match in anti-climax.

The first half of the day had been dominated by Brand’s batting. Of the 230 runs scored by Muckamore the South African professional hit 139 with his only serious support coming from Adey and Dakhane. Even then it was a case of rotating the strike with Adey scoring 20 in a fourth wicket stand of 59 and Dakhane 33 in the sixth wicket partnership of 88. Each hit two boundaries, while Brand finished with 17 fours and two sixes, although frustratingly, bowled by Ben Walsh, another former Instonian, for 139, the highest of his three centuries this season, in the 41^st over. Muckamore added only 24 for the last four wickets.

Brand could also be facing a ban after kicking the stumps when Caltiz was dropped on the boundary off his bowling and it will be up to the umpires to decide his fate, although the fact they spoke to captain for the day Adey after the incident didn’t look good.

Brand has now scored 876 in all competitions – three behind Dadswell - and with 534 in the Premier League at a strike rate of 134 it the is main reason why only Waringstown have a better run rate than Muckamore. However, they are now two wins behind the leaders and with only four games to play, it looks mission impossible to catch them now.

In contrast, Lisburn are just four points behind and, of course, have still to play Waringstown. Their major worry, however is their run-rate is still negative so unless the Villagers lose twice, time is also running out for Lisburn. The teams meet at Wallace Park on August 15.

Next weekend, though, all eyes will be on Shaw’s Bridge where defending champions Instonians, like Lisburn on seven wins, host Waringstown.