Warriors blaze to glory

A grade

Western Park (7-150) def. Buln (9-133): On the back of a blazing start from Sanjay Gangodawila, mature knocks from Sam Batson and Jason Croft, and a superb team bowling effort, Western Park have emerged from their T20 grand final clash against Buln Buln with another flag.

It followed up their default win in the one-day final last weekend.

Having been sent into bat by the Lyrebirds – a decision that beggared belief according to some in attendance – the Warriors innings began with a bang as Gangodawila demonstrated his hitting abilities.

Mixing switch-hits with glides, swipes through mid-wicket with a huge straight six, the star batsmen scored 25 from 12 balls to ignite the innings – and his initial boundary-striking meant the pressure wasn’t on the middle order to follow suit.

Instead, Sam Batson (a 26-ball 34) and Jason Croft (33 from 31) could work the ball into gaps – and their hard-running approach paid dividends as they applied consistent pressure on the fielding side.

The aggressive running resulted in a number of batsmen being found short of their ground, but also resulted in an extra 15 to 20 runs being added to the scoreboard.

At the end of their 20 overs the Warriors had compiled 7-150, a huge total considering the size of the ground and speed of the outfield.

In reply, the Buln Buln top order struggled to cope with the accuracy of Chris Perry and Gangodawila, and the blazing start they might have hoped for wasn’t to be.

Not even Rhys Holdsworth could push the scoring rate, and with Croft (3-33) and Tyler McDonald (2-21 from four) in fine form with the ball the asking rate pushed ever upwards.

Ryan Bishop (18) and James Davidson (a magnificent 35 from 21 balls) did their best to hit back with a flurry of boundaries blasted through the long-on and mid-wicket regions, but there was simply too much for them to do and at the end of 20 overs Buln were found short at 9-133.

Man of the match: Jason Croft.