South Tamworth were rueing fumbling a late chance off Adam Jones after the Bective skipper guided his side to victory with a superb knock in their Tamworth first grade clash at Riverside 2 on Saturday.
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Jones pulled the ball for four the third ball of the final over to bring up what he counts as one of the best wins they’ve had in a long time.
It had been a tough week with Harrison Kelly and Tyson Rennie both moving on to other clubs. They were also effectively down a batsmen for the run chase with AJ Pretorius having to leave early.
Souths batted first and on the back of an 86-run second wicket stand between Josh Crowe (74) and Mitch Smith (41) posted 6-208 from their 40 overs. After an extended delay between innings due to the weather, the Bulls chase was readjusted to 183 to win off 35 overs.
They suffered a set-back early with Troy Osborne striking the second ball of the seventh over. Jye Paterson (28) and Toby Whale (24) regrouped and got them to 52 before Jones entered the fray and took control of the chase.
He was given a life with about seven overs to go, as he and Lachie Davidson (10) put on 37 for the eighth to close within 20 of victory with 13 balls remaining.
Souths skipper Tom Groth had kept two of Angus McNeil’s overs up his sleeve to the end, but his last proved expensive with Jones hammering successive boundaries off the first two balls. Two balls later Gerhard Labuschagne slammed another four, and by over end the equation for Bective was four off six. Crowe bowled that and after a dot first ball, Labuschagne took a single to get Jones on strike.
Jones, who finished unbeaten on 80, was conscious of getting through the Souths’ quicks without too much early damage, and said the plan was to get as close as they could for the last four overs.
“If we got close to seven an over we could pick off the ones and twos and wait for that four ball. It was just a matter of hanging in there, that was the key,” he said.
And while it was his bat Bective won it off, he thought they won the game in the field in the second 20 overs.
“They were 1-95 at drinks. To keep them to 208, that effort in the field is as good as anything we’ve done,” he said.
Davidson (2-39), Cooper Barnes (2-29) and Ben Halliday (2-38) led the charge with the ball, but all the bowlers “bowled sensational”, he said.
Souths were a bowler short and had to use a couple of part-timers, but Groth wasn’t using that as an excuse.
“Full credit to Jonesie, he pretty much single-handedly won them the game,” he said.
That spilled chance off him was undeniably costly, but Groth felt they also probably didn’t bowl that well towards the end of the game.
“We didn’t execute what we were trying to do. We gave that four ball which Jonesie took advantage of,” he said.
Troy Osborne (2-31) and Josh Crowe, backing up his deeds with the bat with 2-32, were the pick of the bowlers.
“I thought we batted really well. I thought 208 was plenty,” Groth said.
