20s Ladies on Knife-edge

The New Zealand Under 20 Ladies team are showing that they will not roll over to the Aussies as they battled their way to a second narrow victory over the top of the ladder Australians yesterday.

The Australians batted first and posted a very respectable 127 with all 4 pairs scoring 25 or more. Alex Lascu top scored with 25 in a valuable final pair stand of 36 with Meagan Dixon. The New Zealand side went in to bat and matched the Australian first skin of 28, but only managed 21 in their second skin. The Australians posted 25 in their second, so this saw 2 valuable points going Australia’s way. The 3^rd skin was the turning point with Emma Fullbrook and Jacinta Savage putting on 51 to swing the momentum in New Zealand’s favour. The final pair of Jess & Amelia Kerr needed 28 to win the game and despite losing 3 wickets they made it home with Jess hitting the winning runs with a ball to spare.

As you can see on the ladder below, the Australians remain comfortably on top despite losing 2 games, this shows how valuable winning skins can be. This is poised to be a real battle come finals time.

Open Ladies

In the Open Ladies division Australia powered their way to a 4 skin victory over the hosts. New Zealand started brightly in their chase of 110 but the Australian bowling in the second half of the innings took the game away from them, Briony Polkinghorne taking 4 wickets for -7.

Open Men’s

The Open Men’s team have a tough run in to the finals with 3 games yesterday and another 3 games today, but yesterday they continued their unbeaten run with 3 convincing wins over India, England and New Zealand dropping only 1 skin in the process. As you would expect the Australian players dominate the individual stats table with 6 of the top 7 spots being occupied by the Aussie Men.

There was a bit of an upset yesterday when New Zealand A put in a gutsy performance to beat the New Zealand team by 17 runs, this win has all but locked in a place in the semi-finals for them, could they cause another upset and find themselves in the grand final?

Under 20 Men’s

The Aussies cemented themselves on top of the ladder with 2 wins on day 4. First up was South Africa where the Aussies posted 150 with Matthew Schubert and Wade Burrowes leading the charge with knocks of 35 and 31 respectively. 150 was always going to be a tall order for the South Africans who have only won 1 game this week. The Aussies walked away with a 150 (3) – 108 (1) victory.

The 8:30PM game against New Zealand was a much tighter affair but the Aussies took out the game by 12 runs in the end.

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