Saturday, 12th February 2000 completed one of the most successful rounds of matches for the Coromandel Cricket club in recent years as the A, B and C grade achieved first innings victories and the D Grade displayed a courageous rearguard effort to avert certain outright defeat.
At Hewett OvalCoromandel in a very strong position to force an outright win after fine
performances by Darren Cheek and Damien Trus.
After winning his fifth toss
for the season, captain Mark Eglinton sent the opposition in to bat and would
have to be delighted with the decision.
David Magarey broke the back of the South Road batting after taking a wicket
with the second ball of the innings and then another in his second over to have
the visitors struggling at 2/4.
After a slight recovery by the South Road
batsmen, the ball was thrown to Darren Cheek and he made the breakthrough with a
"sharp" catch by Mark Wicks at gully. Cheeky then proceeded to terrorise the
batsmen with a spell of 4/1 from 10 balls including the prize wicket of former
Coromandel A Grade player Derek Bonner, Leg Before Wicket second ball for a
duck.
A slight wag in the tail saw 84 runs scored for the last four wickets, however a total of 150 was a modest target for the improving Coromandel batting lineup.
There were no problems for the home side, as openers Damien Trus and Andrew Langmaid saw the team safely to stumps without loss and more than half the required runs on the board. Trus, despite being held scoreless for 34 deliveries on 23, was unforgiving on some very ordinary bowling in the last few overs and struck five boundaries from seven balls to finish off the best day's play for the A Grade this season.
Continuing their demolition of the South Road bowlers the previous week, Trus
and Langmaid successful completed the first A Grade century opening partnership
since October 1991. After Langmaid was dismissed for 39 with the score at 116,
Trus executed a barrage of boundaries and raced towards his first century for
Coromandel.
Trus, who had previously scored 97* against Warradale III in
1993/94 and 93* against Coromandel Ramblers III in 1998/99, both in C Grade
matches, struck 8 fours and 4 towering sixes and completed the century with an
edge past the keeper for 2 off a noball. Always a team player, he was dismissed
next ball as captain Eglinton declared the innings with a lead of 15 runs.
Trus has now scored 185 runs at an average of 37 against South Road in A Grade matches and 279 at 39.9 in all matches against South Road.
Batting a second time, South Road responded to the sporting declaration and provided some attacking batting, scoring at over seven runs an over. During the innings, a milestone was reached by fast bowler Chris Lay who captured his 50th career wicket with a catch by wicketkeeper Trus. A declaration by South Road left the home side with a challenging task of scoring 161 runs from 19 overs to win the match outright.
South Road 150 (Cheek 4/23, Eglinton 2/12, Magarey 2/42)After becoming the only Coromandel captain to lose a toss on Saturday, Andrew Magarey's XI were sent in to bat against a hostile opening attack.
The innings was off to a disastrous start after the first three wickets fell
with only seven runs on the board.
Enter veteran of nearly 300 matches, Bruce
Carpenter, who joined Richard McDonough in the centre to rescue the side from
humiliation. Both household names at Coromandel, they shared a partnership of
134 runs from 237 balls for the 4th wicket.
On a Statistical Note, this innings marked the fourth occasion McDonough and Carpenter have batted together in 19 matches and the first time they have contributed a century partnership. For McDonough, it was his 7th century partnership and the 9th for Henry.
First Innings Win
Coromandel 7/216 (McDonough 107, B. Carpenter 52)After winning the toss and inserting the opposition, this time courtesy of Richard Hunter, the C Grade bowled Hectorville out for a modest 164 on a fine day at the hill.
The highlight of the day was another fine bowling performance from the consistent Greg Kearsley who finished with the figures of 6/34. The Heccies batsman were never able to contend with the bowling of Kerz and at one stage he kept the batsmen scoreless for 29 deliveries while capturing two wickets.
First Innings Win
Hectorville 164 (Kearsley 6/34, Morley 3/31)All five Hectorville wickets were captured by first season players and included the first career wickets for Ben Sellick and Everett James, both courtesy of some fine glovework by first season keeper John Magarey.
Despite losing on first innings, round 9 showed some promising signs as the D Grade averted a certain outright defeat.
Chasing Hectorville's 238 on the first day, Coromandel began the day at 2/24 with a long chase for first innings points. There was further trouble early as captain Mark Lemmey was caught at first slip without adding to his overnight score. It was a position the side never really recovered from despite an entertaining 17 runs in only 14 minutes from the bat of second week player Ken Rowe and a career highest score of 16 by first year player Ben Sellick. Don't let me forget to mention the technically correct innings played by Mark Barber who unearthed the hidden talents with the bat we always knew he had. His unbeaten 18 was a career highest score.
After being forced to follow on, Coromandel needed to survive for 32 overs to avoid an outright defeat, however Ken Rowe seemed determined to score enough runs to set Hectorville a target as he was dismissed for an entertaining 13 off only 6 balls. At 3/49 after 16 overs, it seemed a position of safety had been reached. However, in another turning point, the Hectorville opening bowler, who injured his (non-bowling) hand in successfully intercepting a Ken Rowe pull shot in the first innings, was introduced in the attack and immediately picked up the wicket of Nick Raymond for 18 with a thundering yorker. A collapse of 5 wickets for 4 runs off 33 balls followed leaving the last two wickets to survive more than ten overs to save the match.
But situations like this are the making of true champions, and with tension reminiscent to that experienced during the last 10 overs of South Australia's triumph in the Sheffield Shield final of 1995/96, Jarrad Sim and Matthew Bubner successfully survived the final 63 balls to frustrate the opposition's efforts to force an outright win. Sim, who recently celebrated the completion of his first year of playing cricket, and rising star Bubner, played like veterans with over 200 games experience as they presented a straight bat and showed enormous maturity in leaving the wide balls alone - an aspect of batting Matthew had not entirely mastered until today.
Hectorville 5/238 dec. (Raymond 2/43, James 2/49, Sellick 1/47)
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