Match of the Round
Pizza Kitchen Tigers v Murrabit
MURRABIT and Pizza Kitchen Tigers will lay it all on the line on Saturday as they try to stay in the hunt for the McDonald’s T20 grand final, after both suffered losses last weekend.
The Tigers posted a mammoth 7/178 against Phones R Us Blues, only to see it surpassed thanks to a dominant century from Ryan Hinton.
Murrabit can also consider themselves unlucky, producing two strong but unsuccessful performances against top two contenders, Are Able Bulldogs and Autopro Bombers.
The Tigers will be favourites, having defeated Murrabit by 107 runs in the opening round of the SHDCA season.
Tigers captain Darren Rushton proved unstoppable that afternoon, belting the Blues to all parts on his way to 116, before following up with three wickets.
Rushton was hoping for an equally strong performance from T20 specialists Cooper Fox and Connor Fletcher.
“It was good to see those boys get some runs, especially Connor, I think he’ll finish the year off well and he’s been a good inclusion for us,” Rushton said.
“Our batting is our big strength and we’re looking to put a score of 160-plus on the board each time we walk out there.
“That’s our goal as a batting group, to put a big enough score on the board that makes it difficult to chase, especially since we don’t have the deepest bowling attack.”
While the Tigers were light on for bowlers throughout the one-day matches, the return of Robert Rush last Saturday will give their bowling attack a much stronger appearance.
Rush, along with Guri Singh and Smit Patel, will be out to counter Murrabit’s key batters, particularly Toby Gray, Nathan Henry and Tim Millard.
Gray looms as the key player for the Blues, according to Henry, with Murrabit needing to set a target of at least 140 to be in the match.
“Toby Gray missed out on the weekend, but he has the capacity to make runs really quickly and he’ll be vital to our performance,” Henry said.
“Archer McKnight opened the bowling last weekend too and bowled quite well, so he’ll get tossed the new ball again, and we’ll be looking for some runs from the guys in the middle order.
“We didn’t get the results we were after (last weekend) although we were in both games for much of the day, but that’s the nature of T20 cricket, the momentum can change pretty quickly and when it swings, you need to be ready.
“We were in a winning position in both games, which will give our guys plenty of confidence heading into this weekend, where we can go in and just play positive cricket.”
It was a similar sentiment from Rushton.
“It was a bit of a disappointing result last Saturday, but that’s cricket,” Rushton said.
“T20 cricket is such a fast game, you can put a score of 200 on the board and still get beaten.
“It changes in an instant, especially when a quality batsman gets going, the better batters can prove hard to stop in the short format.”
