Colts gain revenge against Canterbury
After Confusion about who we were playing this week due to we were playing, the boys turned up to the game fired up and ready to go.
After Winning the toss canterbury had a shaky start losing Jaffer and Sinclair for single figures. Mills (64) began the comeback, he was aided by solid contributions from Chanderpaul (23) and Raza (31) and rear guard action from White (54*) and Clarke (29). before Beasley cleaned up the tail, Canterbury all out for 256.
The poor opening batting continued with Manager Andrew Garvens move of moving Kumble up the order not paying off as he and Shewag were both removed with the scoreboard still showing 0. Last seasons hero's Singh (23) and Anderson (56) combined for 55 before Singh was by a great catch by Mills off the bowling of Clarke. Sharaths move down the order howsever did pay off as he made his way to a solid 71. The Colts long batting order also showed some skill with the South African pair of Klusener(50*) and Boucher (29) also completing a 50 partnership. Clarke (3/61) and Kahn (3/68) were the pick of teh bowlers.
The Match was well and truly alive at the half way point with both sides having a huge oportunity to gain on the Division 4 table.
Canterbury started more solidly this innings making thier way to a steady 1/83 before Kumble removed Mills and Chamderpaul in quick succession. The Canterbury innings than went along with a steady fall of wickets throughout the rest of the innings, plenty of batsmen getting starts but not capitalising on them. White was the standout of the innings making another very solid 50. The wickets were evenly shared between the colts bowlers with Noffke, Shaw, Beasley, Kumble and Klusener taking 2 wickets each.
We needed 228 runs to take the match out, this was going to be difficalt with the competitions best bowler on a last day pitch. All the batsmen however performed well to see us home by 6 wickets. Kumble (23) and shewag (85) put on the biggest opening partnership of the game and Singh also made a solid 58. Anderson and Sharath tried to finish the game off quickly but this failed for Sharath when he was caught in the outfield of fthe bowling of clarke for 24(19) Simon Katich then joined Anderson to see us home.
Manager Andrew Garven was clearly over the moon at his teams performance saying "This is a fantastic result against the form side in the division, hopefully this will give us the confidence to finish the season with a bang. We are now just 19 points behind Canturbury, so any slip up could cost us the title. i think the key games for each team will be when they play Western province, a win of a loss there could decide the title."