Battle of the batsmen tipped to decide crucial clash

PORTARLINGTON coach Tony East has described Ocean Grove’s batting line-up as a “handful” ahead of what will be a clash of the A-grade’s two most prolific sides with the bat so far this season.

Led by captain-coach Paul Jubber, who sits atop the Agrade run-scorers with 219, Ocean Grove has posted totals of 268 and 232 and is one of only three sides yet to be bowled all-out. However, it’s Portarlington that leads the way with the bat having accumulating 507 runs from its first two innings with the willow, while the Grubbers are close behind on 500.

“Jubber and a few of them performed pretty well even though they didn’t get over the line last week but they’ll be a handful,” East said during the week.

“Obviously Jubber’s the key, just the same as Sam Chisholm at the top of the order is for us. “I’m sure they’ll be focusing on breaking our opening partnership and we’ll be trying to do the same to them so it will just depend on who wins the toss and how we go about it.”

Portarlington is again likely to be reliant on leg-spinner Sean Kee, who took an impressive 5-37 from 22 overs in the second round win over Queenscliff, with a bowling attack that is left wanting for pace after Devlin Smith departed for Grovedale, while Jamie Morgan has been ruled out for the season with injury. “We’re looking to Sean to bowl more and the other players to bowl around him, our attack’s not super quick without the likes of Jamie Morgan but there are a lot of sides in the same boat that have medium pace attacks,” East said.

Just one change is likely to be made for the clash against Ocean Grove after all-rounder Jason Woods suffered a suspected groin injury last week, with coach East well aware of the magnitude of the challenge posed by the Grubbers. “We’ll probably roll with the same side I’d think, Jason Woods is probably the only one and that’s because of injury so we’re just waiting to see that he’s OK. I think it’s a groin so it’s one of those things that forced him out of the bowing track on the weekend,” East said. “It’ll be an indicator of where we’re at … hopefully we can compete and do all the one percenters that we talk about so we’ll see how it goes.”