East Gambier has a reputation of crumbling under the pressure of tight run chases and the side was looking shaky early on the second day of its final round Barber Shield clash against West Gambier at Malseed Park on Saturday.
After Sam Willis and Kyal Chapman went on a roll, the Bulldogs found themselves wobbling at 6/54 chasing 119, but leadership duo Dion Stratford and Alex Hentschke created some magic to get the monkey of their team’s back.
Stratford was serene falling eight runs short of another century against the Roos, while Hentschke smashed 48 from just 52 balls.
The pair smashed 72% of East Gambier’s eventual 194 and captain Hentschke said it was a big achievement for his team to knockoff the side that had held the ladder lead heading into the fixture.
“It is always nice for it to come off and it’s a bit of a confidence boost for us to pull the game out of a tough spot,” he said.
“We said one partnership was all it was going to take because they did it to us in the first week, so we wanted to play some positive cricket – not trying to survive, but put it back on them.”
East started the day at 2/31, bit could only score two runs from the first 3.5 overs before Chapman started causing trouble against his former teammates.
The allrounder knocked over Gore and Kev Thomson in quick time, while Steven Cameron and Emerson Marks also followed their footsteps to the pavilion for cheap scores.
The Roos had their tails up when the Bulldogs’ captain joined his predecessor in the middle and the visitors’ nerves would have gone through the roof after mix-up between the wickets left Hentschke in no man’s land straight after drinks.
But the skipper survived after a desperate dive and got his innings going by whipping a delightful flick off the legs straight into the pickets for six.
At the other end Stratford was classy as ever peeling off a third successive half century against West to seal the win with a leg in the air.
“It was all about intent,” Hentschke said.
“We got to that drinks break and said to ourselves lets do it in 15-run blocks to drive them down and Dion’s attacking over against Justin DeJong broke their back.
“Dion made a 37-ball duck in the game before, so he made a conscious effort to play his shots.
“Sometimes it only takes one ball to get away and (the six) was a little confidence booster for me and everything started coming off after that.”
Once the Shane DeJong finally broke the 95-run stand moments after Hentschke hit a hat-trick of boundaries, the Roos rallied to limit East to 194 with Chapman returning to end Stratford’s dream of a century.
Chapman and Bray Stephenson were the stars with the ball taking three poles each, but could not do enough to prevent losing first-innings honours and the minor premiership.
The home side then had the pleasure of batting for 30 overs and Justin DeJong and Jack Geddes made the most of it scoring 42 and 33 respectively.
