The Muddies Blues survived an early scare in their semi final against United on Sunday before eventually prevailing in a tough and tight contest.

The result sets up an absolutely huge showdown with the Muddies Greens next week who also won their semi final albeit in slightly more comfortable circumstances.
 
The Blues lost the toss and were sent in to bat. The pitch was a little on the slow side and as always the outfield did not provide value for shots. This along with some very tight United bowling made runs very hard to come by. What was a slow start initially turned into a horror show at 13/3 after 9 overs and continued as the Muddies slumped to 35/7.
 
Then up stepped Matt Chizzonitti and Shane Gillespie who, through a combination of clever stroke play and superb running between the wickets, put on 51 for the eighth wicket.

When Gillespie fell for 20 the score was a much more respectable 86 and a few more handy lower order runs left the Muddies with 94 on the board and something to bowl at. Chizzonitti finished unbeaten on 29.
 
With the wagging tail giving the Blues something to defend, the bowlers set about their task with confidence. Johnson bowled in good areas and the variety of opening up with Chandra seemed to confuse the United batsmen, Chandra picked up a wicket in his first over while Johnson picked up wickets at regular intervals.
 
Then the medium pacers of Hodgson and Marsh were employed to restrict the flow of runs even further and with the run rate beginning to creep up the United batsmen started to swing. The Muddies bowling was too good though and the wickets continued to fall with United falling about twenty runs short.
 
All the bowlers bowled tidily and the wickets were shared equally amongst Johnson, Chandra, Hodgson and Postans and any one of them would normally have been a contender for man of the match but given the importance of the innings in the context of the match that went to Matt Chizzonitti.