Gators win the Decoite Shield
Drought breakers - Gators are Premiers!
Mountain Gate ended a 15 year drought of First XI success, defeating Footballers in a hard-fought final at the weekend. The club last tasted success in the 1999-00 DeCoite final, with Dave Harris’ team defeating St Johns Tecoma. Dave was in the crowd relishing the win, with his brother Chris being the current President.
Lead by Marshall Bunting the Gators finished the season unbeaten, which was a fantastic effort. But as we know, that doesn’t always guarantee success in the final. The boys had to earn the victory the hard way, which made the win all the sweeter.
After losing the toss the Gators got off to the best possible start, with Cam Wheeler taking a wicket first ball of the innings. Three more quick wickets soon followed and it seemed Footballers were on the rack. They dug deep however, with captain Rawlings hanging tough, as the Footballers posted 140, which was to become a tricky target. Wickets were shared around our quick bowlers Wheeler, Bunting, Lindner and Deller. Josh Lindner 3/23, Marshall Bunting 3/38, Cameron Wheeler 3/38, Steve Deller 1/28.
Before the first day had ended, we had rattled along to 53 runs off 12 overs, but with the sting in the tail being that we were also 3 key wickets down! Buckland, Goddard and Wheeler were all back in the sheds, and Johnny Rozakis nearly joined them, being dropped in slips late in the day.
Captain Bunting never quite got settled and he was dismissed early on the second day, which tightened things up considerably.
Johnny continued his charmed run, being dropped a couple more times as he fought his way to 44 before also being dismissed. Trent Fitzgerald came and went, which left DeWayne Bowden and Adam Heath to see us home. Despite a few nervous moments and some tense flash points out in the middle, we got there, with ‘Kiwi’ hitting a mighty six down the ground to send the big crowd into raptures.
Kiwi was awarded the Ken Utting medal as player of the match for his fighting knock.
Final scores were Mountain Gate 6/145 (Bowden 41*, Rozakis 44, Lakshita 3/74 def FTG Footballers 140.
