3rd Grade Start Season In Style

NDCC 3rd Grade have started the season with an outright win beating the Cougars and the clock at Towradgi Park on Saturday.

The Butchers started the day with all 10 wickets in hand and only 40 runs in arrears. Most of the Butchers top order failed to fire giving a glimmer of hope to the Corrimal side as the Butchers slumped to 4/57, but when Jeremy Lum steadied the ship, he and Dave Joinking assured the Butchers would claim first innings points. Captain Joinking led by example with a gritty 54, and once the Cougar's first innings had been passed, some great hitting from Jason Wilson (35), Brice Hillard (16) and Curtis Wilson (14no) led to Joinking making a declaration at 2:45pm with a 96 run lead.

The butchers bowling attack was given a 20 minute session at the Corrimal batting line up and Jed Austin (3/19) did not waste the opportunity, picking up 2 quick wickets including a great grab from Joinking before the tea break and unlucky not to have a 3rd as a catch went sailing through the gully region but was not grasped.. Curtis Wilson bowled with absolutely no luck early on before taking a couple of late wickets to finish with figures of 2 for 20. Austin continued to terrorise the batsmen after the tea break as he was consistently too fast for the batsmen. Jeremy Lum (2/10) and Jason Wilson (2/33) also got amongst the wickets as the Corrimal runs dried up. It soon became apparent that the only thing that was going to stop the Butchers was the clock. A few stubborn Cougar batsmen displayed good fight and the calls from Joinking not to panic were words of wisdom as eventually the pressure got to the batsmen resulting in a suicide runout courtesy of Jed Austin.

As Jason Wilson and Brice Hilliard tied down the Cougar batsmen, with time rapidly running out captain Joinking turned back to his pace attack and it paid dividends as Curtis Wilson cleaned up the tail, the final catch fittingly ending up in the huge hands of Joinking. The butchers were still 3 runs in front and had less than 15 minutes to spare but the outright victory was theirs.

A great start to the season for the lads in what they hope will continue to be a great season.

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