Jason Wilson has spun NDCC 2nd Grade to a potentially first-blood victory over Wests at Hollymount on Saturday. Though a game of little consequence for Semi Final placement; Jason Wilson was offered a promotion up the Grades and the opportunity he seized with both hands.
Before play the Butchers learned they'd be without their captain Mick Allen due to the arrival of newborn son Owen. Graeme Sismey would step in to fill the leaders role. NDCC didn't kick on as much as they would have liked from their overnight 5/109 as Toby English (26) and Lachlan Dunn (24) threatened to take the game away by getting starts. Once dismissed though regular wickets fell despite a stand-in captain's cameo from Sismey (15).
Wests lost an immediate early wicket when Eric Denhartog (3/34) induced a regulation nick in his second over. A further 29 runs were added before Michael Doig (2/30) managed to get the other opener's leading edge that flew towards point. As players naturally looked towards midwicket, Andy Stewart recognized the opportunity and could be seen diving full length at point to grab a stunner. Wests continued to build on the back of their captain Johnston's knock - though things threatened to turn extremely ugly at the tea break.
Clearly unhappy with the banter going on between himself and youngster Rhys Marsh, Johnston shared further words during the walk off before deciding to shape up to Marsh in a threatening manner. Instantly Butcher players were all over the situation; letting the quality piece of Captaincy know that he might want to reconsider doing anything to a minor. Umpires had words with Captains during the break - Johnston can consider himself extremely lucky to have avoided a hearing.
Immediately after the break Sismey threw the ball to Marsh (0/11) in a stunning piece of aggressive captaincy. It could have paid off too - a long hop was mistimed in the direction of mid-wicket where a deja vu Andy Stewart found himself diving forward once more. Unfortunately he was not quite able to hang onto this one and Marsh never got the ultimate revenge.
With Wests cruising at 2/50, Jason Wilson was offered his opportunity. He stamped his presence in his second over with a bamboozling wrong-un that had Wests' Dekleva playing half a dozen shots all over it. Not content with rattling timber once, he then proceeded to bowl regular first grader Crewdson around his legs shortly thereafter. Jason's impact was much more important though than we realized; a fired up Denhartog then combined with him to rip open the middle order in a session that was just brutal; 5 wickets for 26 runs that basically turned the game Butcher flavour. The key wicket was of course Johnston, who continually survived confident shouts of LBW as he could not seem to lay bat to Denhartog's pace. Denhartog finally found his way through and pegged back off-stick.
Jason picked up a further three wickets, including the final wicket to finish with figures of 5-17 from a heroic 15 overs. Good catches to Sismey at mid-off and another peach at slip by Rollestone capped off a memorable day in the field for the Butchers, and Jason Wilson. His man of the match performance was also Player of the Week material.
Wests were bundled for 128; and though the Top 4 rankings never changed the Butchers will be satisfied that they have knocked over two of the top three this year while losing to first seed Keria by a mere 6 runs.
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