Alex Hassett batting for Sydenham/ Hillside. 61427 Picture: EMILY LANE
By Liam Twomey
KEALBA Green Gully pulled off the great escape in the North West Metropolitan Cricket Association on Saturday after they defeated Sydenham/Hillside by 12 runs in a low-scoring match.
After winning the toss and batting, the Cougars made a nightmare start, losing openers Michael West and Evan Long with the score on four.
This brought captain/coach Andrew Lambropoulos to the crease but his stay was also short after being involved in a run out with Balraj Randhawa, to leave Kealba reeling at 3/12.
Danny Viani and Dave Rogowski led the middle order fightback and shared in a 49-run stand for the seventh wicket, but when that was broken so were the chances of a miraculous late-order revival.
The Kealba innings eventually came to an end with the score on 106 in the 38th over.
Lambropoulos was disappointed with the ease at which some of his players went out.
“We are probably giving our wickets away a little bit too easy. I think there is a little bit of inexperience and we are probably batting a little bit young. There is plenty of talent there we just need to take a little bit more pride in our wickets,” he said.
“Those first three wickets really made it hard for the rest of the guys. The middle order was able to hold in there a little bit and come up with a total we were able to defend.”
Mario Buttigieg was outstanding with the ball for Sydenham and finished with the figures of 3/28, while captain John Thrush also caused havoc taking 2/22 from his eight overs.
Only needing 107 to win in good conditions seemed like an easy chase for Sydenham and it looked even easier as the innings progressed. Despite losing the early wicket of Peter Berry, the Storm was cruising at 1/73 with Dean Allan and Blake Charlton looking solid as the crease.
From there the match was turned on its head with something clicking for the Kealba bowlers, who began to rip their way through the Sydenham batting line-up.
The Storm lost 9/21 in an astonishing collapse that included three run outs.
Divesh Kumar was the miracle man for Kealba taking 3/2 from his three overs to wrap up the innings.
Viani was also outstanding with the ball taking 3/19 from his eight overs.
Lambropoulos said he was happy to get the victory after the poor batting display.
“I think we got out of jail a little bit but in saying that we are pretty confident with the bowling and fielding side of the game and we feel like we can pretty much defend anything which can give us a little bit of false security,” Lambropoulos said.
“They were pretty good early but we just stayed positive and just kept the pressure up.”
The win sees Kealba jump to third on the George Luscombe Shield ladder on 12 points. Sydenham is in fourth position on six points, but with four other teams on the same number of wins it will not want to let a match like that slip again.
This week Kealba will take on Pascoe Vale Central while Sydenham/ Hillside will try to recover against Roxburgh Park.
