TAMWORTH Gold and Armidale shared the spoils in the Northern Inland junior competition on Sunday with each city posting a win in Tamworth.
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At Dick Edwards Oval, Tamworth batted first in the under 16s and despite not scoring a big total, managed to win by 22 runs.
It finished with 126 but rolled Armidale for 104.
“We didn’t make enough runs,”Tamworth coach Dave Robinson said.
“We fell in a bit of a heap.
“But Zac Walters and Lachie Cooke put on a good partnership in the middle order.”
Walters made 12 and Cooke 18 but they occupied the crease and put on 28 for the sixth wicket.
Matt Hughes top-scored with 24 while Bill Buster added 17 later in the dig after Jack Richards opened with 14.
Dylan Yeomans did much of the damage for Armidale with 4-26 while Lachlan Elks claimed 2-12 and Will Archer (1-22) and Harrison King (1-16) were the other wicket takers.
Armidale was in good shape in the run chase but once the wickets started to fall they didn’t stop.
The visitors went from 2-63 to 104 all out.
Matt Kaukianen and Elks both made 21 and Will Archer contributed 22.
Walters completed a good performance with 4-11, Buster picked up 2-20 and Keyton Hislop (1-14), Bill Castelden (1-5) and Cooke (1-8) took a wicket each.
“It was a good game,” Robinson said.
“Our fielding was outstanding and the captaincy of Jack Richards with his bowling changes was exceptional.
“The pressure built up and they collapsed.
“My boys are under 15s so it was a special win.”
Having trained together since August it was a good first game for the Gold side.
Tamworth Gold also batted first at Riverside 2 in the under 12s but found itself in trouble in its first stint at the crease.
It was 6-66 at the break and even though Armidale was a few runs behind after its first 20 overs it had plenty of wickets in hand.
Tamworth went back out and finished with 90.
Brad Cameron led the way with 23 while Toby Craig added 14.
But it wasn’t enough as Armidale won by seven wickets with plenty of overs to spare.
Kyle Jennings and Oliver Keft-Gill took a wicket each for Tamworth while Jennings also picked up a run out.
Meanwhile the Tamworth Blue under 14s had a good win on the road over Singleton in the Hunter Valley competition.
Batting first the visitors scored 9-107 with Matt Bryant and Lachlan Davidson the key bats.
After being 3-10 they put on 46 for the fourth wicket before Davidson went for 25.
“The guys got through the tough period after the loss of three early wickets,”
“The pitch popped early and our batsmen didn’t adapt.
“It took a period of patience from Lachie and Matt, as well as the tail, to get us up to 107.”
Bryant went on to top-score with 40.
The next best was an unbeaten 10 from number 10 Rhiannon Graham.
Laura Avard led the way for Singleton with 3-14.
In reply the home side wasn’t doing too badly at 3-41, but collapsed under the pressure of Davidson’s bowling.
He capped a great day with 4-14 while Graham took 2-2 late in the dig and Cooper Barnes (1-13), Will Anderson (1-12) and Sam Attwell (1-6) picked up a scalp each.
Singleton was dismissed for 52, giving Tamworth a 55-run success.
“I believed that anything over 100 was defendable on that pitch, if our bowlers bowled in the right areas”.
“I stressed to the guys at the lunch break that they needed to work hard and take nothing for granted.”
“While the figures went to Lachie Davidson, I was impressed with all the bowlers.
“They stayed patient and stuck to the lines and lengths necessary for that pitch.
“Only downside to the day was that we dropped three fairly straightforward catches.
“Our next two matches against Maitland (December 2) and Upper Hunter (December 16) will be our big tests – it’ll show where we sit against the top Hunter teams.”