Brown’s bat saves the day
NQ WINS FROM WELL BEHIND
NORTH Queensland’s Bailee Brown penned his name into local cricketing folklore with a matchwinning 41 notout on debut to save his side from a shock defeat to Central Queensland.
The 21-year-old had no idea he was even in the representative frame until two weeks ago.
Brown had planned to tackle the Townsville Festival of Rugby Sevens with his Team Minions mates during the A Grade bye round until a bolt from the blue phone call from selectors a fortnight ago.
Brown rewarded their decision i i with i h a rescue mission i i from No. 7 alongside Ryan Eaton, piloting North Queensland from 5-70 in the 22nd over to chase down CQ’S 177 with 10 balls to spare.
Brown blasted four runs to pass the total for a tense two-wicket victory.
It was as heroic a debut as any to don the red-and-gold in recent years.
“It was pretty good playing at that higher level,” Brown said.
“It was a little bit daunting but I tried to treat it like any other game.
“I hadn’t hit many balls before the game because I’d been b away for f work k so I wasn’t feeling great.
“I came in at 5-70 so I just wanted to play low-risk cricket, hitting quick singles and twos and play it safe.
“It was very good having Ryan at the other end because I could go about my plan while he was down the other end hitting most of the runs.”
Brown and Eaton (65), returning for his first North Queensland game in five seasons, combined for a match-saving 85 run partnership before Eaton lost his wicket.
This left Brown to guide the tail-end through the final 22 runs f for victory. i
“It would have been easy to let the nerves take over, especially when we were losing wickets, but even when I was only a couple of runs away I tried to treat any ball like every other ball,” Brown said.
“It was pretty good winning from there. It was a pretty rough situation and ending up getting us home was good because I wasn’t even expecting to get a bat with our top order in such good form.”
Debutant quick Ryan Mccarron took the new ball and delivered figures of 3-32 to complement veteran quick Justin Dixon’s 3-24.
Sam Lowry took a matchbest 4-28 from 10 economical overs.
Central Queensland earned its revenge in Sunday’s T20 fixture in a 26-run victory.
The Townsville-based side struggled to find the boundary in its 138-run chase, with a 6.9 required run rate ballooning to 12.8 with five overs remaining despite six wickets in hand.
Four wickets fell in eight balls through the 17th and 18th over, delivering the Rockhampton-based team a win to split the series.