Clubbers on top
The final day of Grampians Cricket Association home-and-away matches led to Youth Club regaining top position with an outright win over Halls Gap.
The minor premiership also came via Buangortatyoon doggedly holding out Swifts-great Western and preventing a similar result.
St Andrews defeated Aradale for the second time this season, while Pomonal had a bye.
At Stawell’s Central Park, the Clubbers resumed at 5-118 against Halls Gap and batted on to reach 187 with Brad Carnovale reaching 50 with Faizel Butt the best of the Gappers’ bowlers with five wickets.
Batting a second time the Gappers put together 94, with Clubbers opening bowlers Clinton Slorach, 5-16, and Cam Kimber, 3-16, doing the damage. This left Youth Club to make four second-innings runs, which came in the first over.
Swifts-great Western, at Tatyoon, declared at the overnight score, sending Buangor-tatyoon back into bat.
But this time Buangor-tatyoon dug in and upset the Combine’s outright plans.
Nearly every batsman contributed to a final score of 4-143, with Jacob Bates leading with 41.
Best of the Combine’s bowlers was Jayden Mccartney with 2-9 in an innings that yielded 24 maidens out of the 69 bowled.
At Ararat’s Alexandra Oval, St Andrews beat Aradale by seven runs in a match that was nip and tuck all day.
Resuming at 3-34, Aradale lost wickets regularly, with the only partnership of any note being 25 runs between Mitch Wood, 20 not out, and Clinton Rodger.
Saints captain Tom Mills started the day with three wickets and finished with a match-winning 6-25 from 22 overs, while Sam Summers chipped in with 3-22.
Semi-finals this Saturday and Sunday involves Youth Club playing Buangor-tatyoon at Stawell’s Central Park and Swifts-great Western up against Pomonal at Alexandra Oval.
Youth Club, which has led the competition for all but one of the games this season, will start favourite in its game.
Youth Club owes its dominance to opening bowlers Cam Kimber and Clinton Slorach, who have taken 59 wickets between them, and their star bat Nic Baird who leads the run averages with 69.29.
A problem for Buangor-tatyoon is that an injury cloud hangs over Michael Harricks, who is suffering from a basketball-inflicted ankle injury.
Harricks leads bowling averages and will be sorely missed if he can’t bowl.
Batting has been a problem for Buangor-tatyoon, having been dismissed four times under 100 runs, however, its last innings against the Combine showed a lot of promise.
In the other semi-final, Swifts-great Western would be favoured against Pomonal having beat them in their only meeting this season.
The Combine has a balanced attack and a good batting line-up, so Pomonal will look to youngster Lachlan Dalkin, Lee Oliver and co to restrict its highly rated opponent’s batting and then rely on Matt Peel, Clinton Mackley and Luke Jordan to score the runs.