"50 per cent effort" from B Grade muddies
Thursday January 29 2015, 4:40pm
By Ben Vikionkorpi
The B Grade Astute Financial Muddies travelled to Cairns on Sunday and the second of their two T20 clashes.
Playing against middle placed United in the first game of the day, the Astute Muddies won the toss and elected to bat. Reflecting upon last week’s game against Barron, the Muddies batsmen decided to set the foundation for a solid innings rather than going flat out from the start.
However, Damo Darlington forgot this plan and went hard, only to be caught early after a skied hit.
Nathan King and Ethan McCullough steadied the ship and started scoring freely. Hayden D’Addona came to the crease after Ethan was caught for 10, and straight away Haydos played the support role for Kingy.
Scoring 46 runs and six and a half overs, Kingy and Haydos were set to post a massive total; but alas Hayden was caught and bowled on 20.
This bought a succession of quick wickets, resulting in Kingy being starved of the strike and the scoring going downhill.
After Ben Gaske, Kingy and Gary Postons were dismissed, Sam Evans and Randal Smith put on a good partnership.
However, Randal decided to retire himself for the last over believing he wasn’t scoring fast enough. Benny Vik replaced him but it was Sam Evans who teed off, getting the Astute Muddies to 115 off their 20 overs.
Searching for early wickets, the Muddies started poorly with simple dropped chances costing them.
The United batsmen capitalised, starting to punish the ball. A good catch from McCullough dismissed the United captain.
Once again, Hayden chipped in with the big wicket, removing rising superstar David Coulthard with a somewhat dubious LBW decision.
Hayden again picked up another wicket rattling the stumps, but was poorly supported with bad catching and sloppy fielding.
Nathan King chipped in with a wicket, but the continuation of below standard fielding resulted in a total of three dropped catches and three missed run outs through panicking.
Even still, then game extremely close, with United needing 4 from the last over to win. With Adam ‘Luco’ Lucas bowling, the Muddies were still confident of the win.
With 2 balls to go, United still needed 2 runs to win. But again, the fielding let down some great bowling, allowing the batsmen to scamper through for 2 singles to win the game on the last ball.
Backing up from the disappointing first game, the Astute Muddies were asked to bowl by Innisfail.
With a renewed focus and attitude for this game, Luco claimed a wicket first ball with a solid catch at third slip by Kingy.
Luco then bowled another batsmen to have Innisfail reeling.
The fielding effort this time was superb, with a much greater calmness, allowing for two great run outs, even with Luco’s goanna –like effort to get back to take the bails; Innisfail 4 / 10.
A cheeky partnership of 40 put Innisfail back in contention, before D’Addona again claimed three important wickets.
Nathan King again chimed in with a wicket before injuring his knee whilst fielding. Adam Lucas and Benny Vik then cleaned up the tail to dismiss Innisfail for 79.
Randal Smith and Ethan opened the batting, but Eto was quickly dismissed. Damo Darlington then came to the crease in a much more controlled fashion. The old school grafter and the dasher put on 37 runs in 8 overs before Randal had enough and was caught.
Mitchell Gibbs, in his first bat for the Muddies after asking to go up the order, lasted 6 balls to be bowled for a duck. Benny Vik then joined Damo, looking to up the rate, but found it hard to see the ball, and looked like a duck ou of water. Damo was caught and then BV was given LBW with the score on 66, still needing 14, but with 5 overs left.
Enter Luco and D’Addona; Hayden didn’t really get a look in as Luco hit 15 runs from 7 balls to finish the game in the 17th over.
It was a much improved effort from the Astute Muddies, but they are going to have to play a lot better this week against the top placed Toads at Fuller Park if they are going to win.
