Bicester & North Oxford put in their best performance of the season to hold Division 1 leaders Buckingham Town to a draw on Saturday, but still face a struggle to stay up.

At the half way stage of the season, Bicester are 21 points adrift and still seeking their first win.

Their bowlers struggled to contain Buckingham's aggressive batting line-up, as Brook Hatwell hit an unbeaten 103 and Leigh Tomlinson 76 in their side's 256-5 declared.

But Bicester's batsmen fought back, with opener Darryl Woods compiling 56 and Duncan Bradshaw 101 not out as closed on 215-7. Town spinner James Gear took 5-56.

Bicester & North Oxford 8pts, Buckingham Town 15

Banbury Twenty are also facing a battle to stay up after they crashed to a ten-wicket defeat at title-chasing Dinton.

With the exception of Mark Haupt (64), Twenty's batsmen were all at sea against Dinton all rounder Adam Mould, who finished with an impressive 5-33.

Michael Sutliff (86no) and Rob King (36no) then took their side to an easy win.

Dinton 25, Banbury Twenty 2

Oxford 2nd are level on points with Twenty after they made Oxford Downs work hard for their four-wicket win.

Put into bat, Oxford managed a respectable 221-9 thanks to Wasim Mehmood (66) and Alex Morgan (50), while Tim Hardy took 5-52 for Downs.

Mehmood followed up his good work by taking 4-57 with the ball, but useful contributions from Tom Crouch (36), Wes Bartlett (35), Richard West (31) and Frankie Crouch (31) eventually saw the hosts to 222-6 and victory.

Oxford Downs 25, Oxford 2nd 10

A topsy-turvy encounter between Cumnor and Horspath ended in a tense draw, with the visitors in the ascendancy.

Will Eason's 42 was the only score of note in Horspath's 154 all out, in which Adam Cook took 3-43.

The visitors were the architects of their own downfall, with three batsmen falling to run outs.

Cumnor also found scoring difficult, as only Sam Jones (43no) could get going, and he almost ran out of partners as the home side ended on 136-9.

Cumnor 10, Horspath 14

Shipton-under-Wychwood's recent run of fine form came to a halt as they suffered a crushing defeat at Bletchley Town – who had not won since the opening day on May 9.

Shipton slumped to 82 all out in the face of some fine bowling by left arm seamer Ghufran Mohammed (4-23) and Ed Packard (3-24).

Earlier, Town's 208-8 had been built around Graham Simpson's 87 and a handy 54 from Mark Roberts. Jason Hunt (3-66) was the pick of the visitors' attack.

Bletchley Town 25, Shipton 3