Peel and St John’s maiden European Cricket League adventure came to an end with semi-final defeat in the competition’s group stages.

The Manx side were defeated by former champions Dreux for a second time this week on Wednesday afternoon to dash their hopes of a place in ‘finals week’ next month.

The Saints won the toss and elected to bat against the French side, but found themselves up against it from the off as they lost wickets on a regular basis, finishing on 81 from their 10 overs. Peter Burgoyne was top scorer with 19.

Dreux set about the reply with gusto and knocked off their target inside five overs to proceed to the group final.

Prior to that the westerners had made an encouraging start to their group A games in Malaga.

On Monday, they side suffered an agonising ‘golden-ball’ defeat at the hands of Germans Darmstadt after the pair both scored 114 from their 10 overs.

Eddie Beard top scored for the Mullen-e-Cloie outfit with 61 in that match with Burgoyne taking two wickets.

The westerners bounced back to claim a convincing six-wicket win over Romanians ACC Bucharest.

On Tuesday, PSJ opened the day with a heavy defeat at the hands of Dreux as the French side restricted the Manx to 79 after scoring 134.

However, Serbians Stari Grad were beaten by eight wickets later that day to secure the Manx side’s place in Wednesday’s eliminator stage.

In their first match of this phase PSJ secured a big win over Bucharest scoring 168 runs thanks in large to 67 from Beard and 73 from Andrew Clarke.

The Romanians were bowled out for only 81 with Kieran Cawte and Brendan Bennett both picking up three wickets to set up the week’s second encounter with Dreux.