Yarraville players celebrate a wicket on Saturday. 73020 Picture: EMILY LANE
By Liam Twomey
YARRAVILLE Club Cricket Club’s unbeaten streak has continued in the Victorian Turf Cricket Association with Hoppers Crossing the latest victim on Saturday.
The sides were forced to play a one-day match after last week’s rain. Yarraville won the toss and elected to bat.
Fresh from an early season century, Anthony Cristofaro looked solid as the crease and together with fellow opener, Justin Baker, the pair added 46 for the first wicket.
Fawad Ahmed hit back for the bowling side, dismissing both batsmen with only one run being added. Wickets continued to fall at regular intervals but with the run rate also ticking over both sides would have liked their chances of pulling off a win.
A late slog from Andrew Cullen may have proved the difference in the match as two sixes from the number five helped boost the total to 8/142 at the conclusion of Yarraville’s 40 overs.
Ahmed was by far the pick of the bowlers and finished the innings with six wickets to bring his early season total to 15 from three matches.
Hoppers Crossing president Steve McNamara said the form of Ahmed had been great for the club.
“It doesn’t come as any great surprise to us. We felt last year in the division we were in guys were very tentative to play him. This year we were fairly confident that guys of a better clash would try to attack him and he is the sort of bowler that if they attack him, they do so at their own peril,” McNamara said.
“He just puts enormous pressure on and then also brings other guys into the mix down the other end.”
The Cats were unable to back up their great work with the ball though and will look back at three run-outs costing them in their pursuit of the total.
They were dismissed in the 39th over for 127 leaving them 16 runs shy of their target.
“I think it was disappointing not to get the result because I thought we were well and truly in the game,” McNamara said.
“When Michael Tubb and Darrel (Brown) were batting I thought we were a huge chance. Three run-outs were very poor from our perspective and we thought we could have got the result had that not been the case.”
Despite the weekend’s loss, McNamara said he was happy with how the club was performing since making the jump to Senior Division.
“Overall we are, I think that performance shows that we will certainly be competitive. We are just looking forward to playing 80 overs of cricket. It’s unfortunate that from the three games we haven’t played a full 80 overs yet.”
Also in the VTCA, Williamstown CYMS missed a golden opportunity to claim its first win of the year, collapsing against St Bernard’s OC on Saturday.
The CY’s looked in cruise control at 2/106 and needed just 71 more runs to reach the target.
However, they lost 6/17 in a disastrous passage of play and were eventually bowled out for 142.
Spotswood easily chased down the target of 205 set by Bentleigh on day two of its clash on Saturday. Matt Leddin, Andrew Dickinson and David Buysen all posted half-centuries as the score rocketed to 7/279 when play was stopped.
