A very tough week for the Club with a large number of players unavailable – the Bottle-O Eagles had 9, Turkeys 4 and Kilda 9. So, the tough decision was made to default both the Turkeys T20 fixtures and move two players from them to the Eagles and two to the Kilda.
The Bottle-O Eagles took on a pretty strong looking NEV side at Tonga Park – the Eagles included Jermey Smallridge and Luke Ritchie both on debut. The Eagles had eight players with less then 25 matches, so a very inexperienced team took the field. Kurt Johnston was again leading the team with regular skipper Taylor Cumberland unavailable – after winning the toss Kurt decided we would have a bat. Dylan Fletcher and Lewis Garden opened up and it was difficult going with the ball doing ‘plenty’. After losing Dylan early Luke Marsh joined Lewis and they both battled really hard and got the score to 45, in the 18th over, when Lewis was out for 19. Another wicket in the same over had the score at 49/3 when Patrick Arnold joined Luke and together, they patiently moved the score to 94 when Patrick was dismissed. Just before the lunch break Luke’s innings came to an end at 36 and the score sitting at 112/5 when lunch was taken. After the break the boys continued to battle and only Kurt managed to make double figures and when he was 8th out for 25 the final two wickets fell quickly and the final score of 141 was achieved in 46.5 overs. Whilst not as many as we would have liked it was a gutsy performance by the lads.
The Valley openers came out firing and scored freely as they quickly moved their score to 74, in the 13th over, when Larry Vimukthi took the first of his three wickets. At 91 & 103 Larry struck to take our only three wickets at Valley cruised to a seven-wicket victory in the 26th over.
The Kilda resumed their season with two T20 fixtures out at Sunnyvale. The morning game against NEV Veterans who batted first and made steady progress as they managed to reach 141/8. Leading the bowling attack skipper Scotty McCormack claimed 2/19 off four with good support from Cam Harris with 2/25 off his four. Although a little expensive Michael Sumner claimed 3/34 off three overs. So, a total that probably had teams fairly even at the break.
The reply got off to a steady start with Devin Stapley (14) and Shaun Wheeler (11) but it was Cameron Harris (46) and Mark Somerville (36) that did the heavy lifting before the Kilda had a couple of wobbles losing three wickets cheaply before they staggered over the finish line 8 down with 2 overs to spare.
After a good win it was onto the GI/Brighton team who batted first. Kieran Parker and Tim Heller both had good tight spells, Kieran 1/15 off his 4 and Tim 2/19 off 4. On debut Ben Turnock was also solid with 0/13 off 3. As can be seen by these figures scoring was not easy with some good bowling. Although wickets where hard to come by as well – so a total of 136/4 was a reasonable effort, but the Kilda probably felt they were in front at half-way.
The Kilda lost an early wicket before Shaun Wheeler (52*) and Scott Chapman (36) got the bulk of the required runs. After Scott was dismissed Mark Somerville (18) and Kieran (17) got the team to the finish line before the final run was scored at the end of 16 overs – so 137/4 was in the end a comfortable victory.