Terrific conditions greeted cricketers for the first round of the ABC Shield played on Saturday.
Town Services travelled to Coonamble and beat the home team by nine wickets. In a relatively high scoring game on McGrane, Curban managed to beat USC Marthaguy by five wickets. The third game was a disappointing forfeit from Buncha to the Mountain men.
The Gilgandra Bowling Club best performances came from the USC /Curban game with Andrew Newstead (Curban) 50 not out, John McKay (USC) 45, Tim Altmann (Curban) 39, Andrew Freeth (USC) 37 and Ben Storer (USC) 31 the best of the batsmen.
Best of the bowlers were Tim Lacey (Curban) 2/19, Mark Robertson 2/22 (USC), and Chris Allport (Curban) 2/29.
This week’s USC hosts Coonamble, Toora will play Curban and the feathery ones (Gular) fly to Dubbo to play Buncha. Town will have the bye.
Matches for round 3 (October 24) will have Buncha versus USC (Dubbo), Gular versus Toora (Gular) and Town versus Curban (Gil), Coonamble bye.
On October 25, Gilgandra will travel to Coonabarabran to play the first round of the Country Plate. This will be Gilgandra’s only representative competition.
A squad of 15 has been chosen with harvest expecting to reduce the numbers. The squad is: Graham Baker, Andrew Freeth, Ben Jenkins, Warren Lefebrve, John McKay, Cameron Morse, David Johnson, Trevor Rogers, Jarred Couley, Andrew Newstead, Adam Hazelton, Wes Lummis, Paul Lambell, Sam Holland and Dave Robertson. A bus will be provided for transport.
Match Reports
Curban v USC Marthaguy
USC won the toss and elected to bat with their openers Andrew Freeth and Ben Storer taking over from where they finished last year.
The openers put on 67 for the first wicket before a change of pace saw Freeth dismissed for a well-made 37, with USC going to the drinks break at 1/72.
Two early wickets straight after the break, including opener Storer for 31, gave Curban a lift in the field however USC captain John McKay had other ideas.
McKay featured in a 48-run partnership for the fifth wicket before eventually being dismissed for 45 with the USC score on 155.
Some lusty blows from Michael George enabled USC to post a very respectable score of 7/164 after their allotted 40 overs.
Highlights of the Curban’s time spent in the field included Luke Forans exceptional keeping in his first game for Curban and Andrew Mudford, also playing his first game for Curban, taking his first wicket.
All this was overshadowed by Scott Chandler who took his first catch for Curban after at least 10 seasons.
The Curban run chase got off to the worst possible start with opener Chris Allport dismissed for a duck in the first over to have Curban 1/0.
Luke Foran strode to the wicket joining Tim Altmann and added 25 for the first wicket before skying an attempted pull shot, resulting in a magnificent catch being taken by John McKay (jnr).
Andrew Newstead joined Altmann and together they took the score past 50 before Altmann was bowled by an absolute snorter from Mark Robertson.
Trevor Rogers came and went for 13 which included the obligatory six and when Wes Lummis was caught behind for 16 with the score now at 5/99, the game was hanging in the balance.
Simon McCutcheon had other ideas though and showed great level headedness for a young bloke and together with Newstead put on an unbeaten partnership of 66 runs to see Curban pass the USC total with five wickets in hand.
Newstead finished on 50 NO and Simon McCutcheon on an extremely well made 28 NO.
USC young bowlers, John McKay (jnr) and Cameron Martin bowled the final two overs of the innings and proved that they will be very good cricketers in the not too distant future.
Mark Robertson was the pick of the USC bowlers taking 2/22 off eight economical overs and extracting significant amounts of turn from the wicket.
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