TONIGHT’S McDonald’s Tamworth Premier League Twenty20 final will be the start of a big few days for McDonald’s opener Jye Paterson as he chases success on three cricketing fronts.
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On Sunday he’ll lead the Central North 16s against Mosman in the State Club Challenge final at Allan Border Field.
From there he’ll make the trip south to Wollongong to trial for the Combined Catholic Colleges open side.
They’ll run Monday and Tuesday and take the form of a 50-over match and two Twenty20s.
Moree’s Paddy Montgomery and Upper Hunter’s Caleb McNeill will also be trialling.
They’ll also be part of Central North’s Twenty20 assault against the AW Green Shield winners.
Central North won the right to play them by winning the Bradman Cup.
That success brought more rewards this week with Paterson, Montgomery, McNeill, Narrabri’s Coby Cornish and Tamworth’s Tyson Rennie named in the Country sides to play in the State Challenge in Bankstown in April.
Paterson will lead a Purple side containing McNeill, while Cornish, Rennie and Montgomery will play for the Maroon, the challenge doubling as a trial for the ACT/NSW Country U17s side.
“It will be pretty exciting,” Paterson said.
They’ll play three games as well as receive coaching.
“Country was my goal at the start of the season. That’s where I wanted to get to,” he said.
By his admission, he didn’t play as well as he would have liked at the Bradman Cup.
“My first two games I played pretty well,” he said.
After that he had a couple of low scores but was still hopeful of a Country call-up.
The “c” next to his name did come as a quite a surprise.
“I didn’t really think I’d get that,” he said.
He said Mosman would be tough on Sunday.
They were undefeated in the Sydney competition.
Paterson is part of a pretty strong batting lineup.
“We have a long batting lineup and a fair few attacking batters,” he said.
Batting in Twenty20 is a bit of a balancing act.
“You have to get bat on ball with the intent to score runs,” Paterson said.
It’s about minimising the dot balls but preserving wickets so that in the last 10 overs “you can kind of go for it a bit more”.
With the ball it’s the opposite.
“You want to try to take early wickets for not a lot of runs,” he said.
“Try to keep the pressure on.”
He said they’ve got the attack to do that.
“We practised a lot of death bowling at the (Cricket NSW) academy,” he said.
Tonight will see McDonald’s taking on the TPW Tigers.
The Tigers finished on top after a late surge but Paterson is confident they can end their run.
“We have the team to do it,” he said.
“We just need to get Jonesie (Adam Jones) out early.”
“He’s the key with the bat. When he gets runs they score a good total.”
McDonald’s aren’t short of game winners themselves.
“We have a pretty strong batting lineup,” Paterson said.
“Most of our bowlers bat a bit too.”
Tonight’s final will get underway at No.1 Oval at 7.15pm following the third/fourth playoff.