By Molly Magennis
Yarraville Club managed to nab a big win against Haig Fawkner on Saturday in the Victorian Turf Cricket Association senior division.
It was the Clubbers fourth win in a row with the win moving the team to second place on the ladder, overtaking Haig Fawkner.
The Clubbers were hot on Haig’s tail throughout the innings and managed to chase down their total of 9-232, with four overs to spare.
Clubbers captain-coach Mitch Johnstone attributed the big totals from both teams to very attacking batting and a batting friendly wicket.
“It was probably one slightly smaller boundary to hit to ,” Johnstone said. “It was overly ridiculously small but they were the sort of the ingredients for a pretty high scoring game.”
Andrew Cullen and Johnstone were the best of the bowlers with two wickets each.
The Clubbers made 6-234.
Justin Bramble produced 56 with four sixes and six fours, and Trent Lawford did what he does best, managing 72 runs off 51 balls, with six sixes and three fours.
Mitch Johnstone said Lawford was a bit fatigued after bowling due to the heat, so he was held back a little which seemed to work in the teams favour.
“He is a bit of a slow starter Trent,” he said. “He does make a few single digit scores so we really stressed to him just to give himself 20 balls to settle in and then he caught up really well.
“We know that once he gets going, he’s very hard to stop.”
Justin Adriel made his debut for the first XI on Saturday, having made his way up from the lower grades.
‘[He’s] got a little bit fitter and really bought into the program the last couple of years,” Johnstone said.
“That’s a really pleasing story, because we’ve got a lot of guys that have now come through our thirds into our firsts over the last 12 months, that is testament to their involvement and their investment.
“He made a really pleasing start to his first XI career.”
Despite COVID and injury interruptions throughout the season, Johnstone is pleased with his team’s performance so far and their current place on the ladder.
“We’re humming along nicely…. the two games we lost were quite gettable, we thought that stung us into action a bit as well,” he said.
“We’ve been a little bit unfortunate that we’ve probably had one of our key players out each week….so considering that we’ve had a fair bit of interruption pretty much at every game, we probably haven’t fielded our best team just yet, we’re taking that as a positive.”
Yarraville Club will take on Westmeadows from 1pm at Willowbrook Reserve this Saturday.
