Cobar denies Nyngan Shane Smith Memorial Cup
Wednesday February 25, 2009
Cobar batsman Doug North on his way to a century on Sunday at Ward Oval.
Cobar’s First Grade cricket side had an easy win over Nyngan on Sunday at Ward Oval for the Shane Smith Memorial Cup; a cup Cobar has held since its conception five years ago.
Cobar’s Second Grade side also won the Tom Cooney Memorial Trophy back from Nyngan.
It was good to see Nyngan make the effort and bring two teams across.
In First Grade Cobar won the toss and batted on an easy-paced wicket.
Openers Jake Harbison and Peter Neale gave Cobar a good positive start of 42.
Harbison was batting where he left off from his 100 in Saturday’s senior competition match and played some bold and attacking strokes before he was out for 31.
Neale also started aggressively but somehow batted himself out of form and lost his way before he was dismissed for 14.
Doug North and Stewart Fraser then took on the Nyngan attack and advanced Cobar’s score to 127 before Fraser was out for 38.
Meanwhile, North was in imperious form; anything short of a length was pulled for six and he mixed it up with square cuts and deli-cate late cuts to reach his second representative hundred.
He finished on 122 not out as Cobar reached 7/264 off their 50 overs.
He only gave one chance and after that his 100 always looked likely.
North joins Fraser as the only other Cobar cricketer to have scored two centuries at representative level.
Nyngan’s lack of representative cricket prac-tice this year showed in their batting.
They still have dangerous batsmen but they were never given the chance to get on top.
Once again it was North, who must have had a good night’s sleep, making the early inroads and picking up 3/12 off five overs.
Wade Potter bowled his usual immaculate length taking 1/9 off six overs.
David Watson, playing in his first representa-tive game, wasn’t frightened to toss the ball up and was rewarded with 2/20 off five overs.
Mathew Nicholson (2/4) and Jake Harbison (1/10) cleaned up the tail and Nyngan was dismissed in the 23rd over for 75.
Between the break of innings the teams and spectators observed a moment’s silence for the Victorian bushfire victims.
In second grade Cobar was playing for the Tom Cooney Memorial Shield which Nyngan held.
Cobar batted first and struggled to make a competitive total.
Mal Hillier, (30) and Clay Neale (14) were the only early batsmen to make any impact and Justin Richardson chipped in with 14 to give Cobar a total of only 104 off 29 overs.
Nyngan’s opening batsmen put on 47 runs in 11 overs and it looked like the Tom Cooney Shield was heading back east again.
At lunch Nyngan was 2/55 and doing it easy.
Maybe it was what they had for lunch, but after the break they fell in a heap.
Hillier backed up his aggressive batting by taking 3/23 with the ball, but it was Wade Smith who did the real damage. (They should bottle whatever he had for lunch!)
He took two wickets in his first over, two in his third and two in his fourth to give him the remarkable figures of 6/10 off four overs and instant hero-status among his team-mates.
Nyngan was bowled out for 82 after losing nine wickets for 27 runs, after they almost had the game won at lunch time!—contributed
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