It was a busy weekend for Penola with it’s A Grade cricket team fronting up in Warrnambool less than 24 hours after taking on East Gambier in the heat of Scott Park.
As a result of flying to last summer’s Dycer Constructions Big Bash title, the Eagles earned the right to fight for the prestigious Sungold T20 Championship.
Each summer the winner of the Mount Gambier and District Cricket Association’s shortest format competition enters the knockout tournament based in Victoria.
Penola made the two-hour trek to Warrnambool’s Davidson Oval to compete in the must-win quarter-final with the hope of progressing to the Australia Day finals and fight for the $20,000 cash prize previously won by West Gambier.
The Eagles lined up against City United, a club based in Colac – the home of Australia’s T20 World Cup winning captain Aaron Finch.
Michael Waters’ men would have carried high hopes heading into the fixture of following in the Roos’ footsteps, but things did not go to plan from the outset.
Batting first openers Jack Schulz and Mark Smith were pivotal to Penola’s prospects of posting a match-winning score, but they both fell before a boundary could be scored.
Dangerman Smith could not find his groove until he edged his third ball to the keeper for a duck, while Schulz managed to hang around for a couple of overs.
But Schulz could only manage eight until he fell to the same fate as his opening partner – caught Nathan McNamara, bowled Shane Currie.
The double blow left the Eagles shellshocked as it took them 7.5 overs to find the boundary rope.
Lachlan Jones and Drew Clayfield slowly launched the remnants of a fightback battling through 30 balls to post 22 runs as the Victorians kept applying the pressure.
But their little union crumbled apart when they fell in back-to-back balls as the Colac crew started to close in on Penola.
Determined not to give up without a fight skipper Waters was proactive at the crease and was able to push the team past the 50-run milestone alongside Thomas Clayfield.
Clayfield found a way to hit a rare four before being caught next ball, while Waters kept poking gaps in the field.
The captain was looking set on 21 until he took one step too far and was stumped.
With the head of the snake cut off, the rest of the body fell quickly as City United took the last four wickets for the cost of just one run.
Only two boundaries were possible in the Eagles’ meagre 76 after Ged Leersen picked up his maiden T20 five-wicket haul.
With such a small score to defend, Penola had to steam in hard with the new ball to keep its faint dreams alive.
Jones had his tale up and managed to trap Currie lbw in his second over to breathe life into the contest.
But the energy was short lived with Dylan Slater and Luke Inglis keeping the scoreboard moving.
Although Slater and Inglis were eventually bowled by Jones and George Kidman respectively, by the time their wickets fell the game was as good as over with less than 30 runs required to win at the halfway stage of the innings.
Even with the game gone, the Eagles kept chipping away picking up morale-boosting breakthroughs.
One positive for Penola was its ability to get on top of City United skipper McNamara, who could only score five runs from 11 balls before falling to his opposite number Waters.
Rani Jamieson was one of the few batters to find any fluency on a wicket where only four boundaries were scored in all day.
His well-composed 23 pushed City Untied to level pegging, but he denied the winning runs when he mistimed a Paul Ellis ball straight into Smith’s hands.
However, the Eagles had little time to celebrate as City Untied cruised to a crushing five-wicket win to send the South Australians back over the border with little to cheer about.
