Hampstead were unable to ram home their advantage and secure their third win of the season on Saturday, and their draw against Stanmore meant they slid back into the bottom two in the Premier Division of the Middlesex County League.

Archie Fellowes took 5-17 as the reigning champions bowled their visitors out for 205 after 62.2 overs, and George Adair (85), Sam Evison (39) and Henry Collier (25) then helped the hosts to reach 159-1 in reply.

However, Hampstead suddenly lost six wickets for just five runs, with Tushaar Karia (5-38) and Steven Reingold (2-57) doing the damage.

After Adair’s dismissal, captain Steve Clark (2), Ragheb Aga (0), Liam Hughes (0), Collier and Ollie Steele (0) returned to the hutch in rapid succession – and at 164-7 Hampstead were in danger of being defeated.

Fellowes (17) and Zain Rizvi (11) stopped the rot and ensured the worst-case scenario did not occur – but the home side finished their 62 overs on 195-9, just 10 runs short of Stanmore’s total, and were overtaken by Twickenham, who are their next opponents on Saturday.

Hampstead chairman Nick Brown said: “Obviously we are disappointed not to win the game, having put ourselves into a terrific position.

“However, we have to give credit to the Stanmore spin bowlers – they bowled very well and were all over us once they got the breakthrough.

“Once they took a couple of quick wickets we just needed to stop the bleeding, but we couldn’t and in the end it took some very good batting from Archie and Zain to bring us back into the game and avoid defeat.

“I don’t feel like we are far away and hopefully we can pull it together at Twickenham.”