Seniors Fifth Round Day 1 Reports
Good start against last years Semi Final protagonist.
On the back of a big win against the other unbeaten side, we headed to the countryside to take on the team that knocked us out of the finals last year.
Winning the toss I decided to bat, and it seemed like a good idea when the light rain fell 15 minutes before the start of the game, however 15 minutes after the game started we were 2/12.
Enter birthday boy Adam Heath, who played a very “mature” innings to help get us back on track, Heathy and Marshall were able to put on 151 for the third wicket before Marsh, chased one two many and knicked one to first slip. Unfortunately Heathy followed two overs later for a very well made 48.
Trent Fitzgerald (17), Josh Lindner and Peter Castledine (14) continued to push the innings along well with useful partnerships allowing us to continue to push into the 80th over. Josh Lindner fell in the last over with his highest score in DeCoite Shield, with a very well made 61, and with that our innings ended on 280.
With a quick and small outfield in their favour, it should make for an interesting chase next week.
Seconds face top of the ladder South Belgrave.
Round 6 and it's battle of the top teams, and the Gators biggest challenge yet. That being said, the 2nd's were severely disadvantaged coming into this match with the amount of unavailable players and players pulling out/going up to the ones. However, this gave big opportunities for aspiring two's players from the thirds such as Luke Heads, Steve Terrington and Trent Young.
South Belgrave won the toss and elected to bat.
The new opening duo of Eraj and Brad started the Gators off well as Brad got the first wicket (Rob Barry for a Duck) in the second over. Up until the tea break, the Gators were tight with the bowling and had set a good standard in the field, with restricting South Belgrave to 2-79 after 40 overs.
With almost 9 bowlers in the team, the ball was thrown around a fair bit, and Josh Burridge finally got his first bowl in the twos. Taking 1/23 off 6, Josh was looking promising and impressed the skipper. South Belgrave got on top of us and made solid partnerships and most batsmen making a good contribution. Brad was the pick of the bowlers, tkaing 4/40 off 19, with Luke heads bowling well with 2/26 off 7, and Eraj 2/56 off 26, leaving South Belgrave with a total of 9/233.
The Gators have a big challenge ahead of them next week, and will need everyone to step up and be the one to take the Gators home to our 5th win.
Threes struggle with a make shift team.
The 3rds played Eildon Park at Stud Park. After 8 changes to the team from the previous round we managed to find 11 players thanks to some of the vets and few young guys who filled in the spots.
We won the toss and batted and Michael Cleeland got us of to a good start making 17, unfortunately after that our batsmen couldn't get started and we were bowled out for 75.
Only defending 75 was always going to be tough but our bowling and fielding was very tight never making it easy for them to score, Dane Heffernan picked up our only wicket as they crawled past our score to finish at 1/96.
