NANA Glen Cricket Club defeated Diggers Cricket Club by 86 runs to win the Lachie Dew trophy and go top of the First Grade ladder last Saturday at Fitzroy Oval.

Nana Glen won the toss and elected to bat first and came under an early attack as Harry Cross smashed the bails off the stumps bowling out Wade Secomb for eight runs.

Ruben Carey continued the momentum dismissing Dan Craig for two runs with a fine catch from Thomas Luchetti.

After surviving an early onslaught the Nana Glen middle order punished loose balls as Brad Neary changed the course of the match scoring 63 runs from 75 balls with Tim Anderson scoring 27 runs and Beau Guthrie scoring 16 runs to set a formidable total of 173 runs.

Thomas Luchetti opened the batting for Diggers and scored 16 runs before being bowled by Josh Lansdowne.

It was all downhill from there on for last year’s Premiers as the fierce Nana Glen bowling attack dismissed Diggers for 87 runs, winning by a comfortable margin to go top of the ladder.

Nana Glen captain Nick Stanlan-Velt praised the team’s performance.

“The team worked through a fantastic fight back with the bat, we went down 4 wickets early, but I knew we had the batting depth to find a good partnership eventually, that came from Brad Neary 63 and Tim Anderson 27, putting on a strong partnership of 62 in those tough middle overs where it was crucial we kept wickets for late in the game.

“Bowling honours went to vice-captain Ben Watson getting 4/5 off 8 overs, and Josh Lansdowne 3/24 off 8 overs.

“Winning this game meant we took out the Lachie Dew trophy, which is a trophy won for each top level graded game versus Diggers.

“Lachie was a fantastic player and member of both clubs and it’s an honour for the loyal Nana Glen community to see this trophy in our cabinet,” said Stanlan-Velt.

Diggers captain Jonathan Paff told News Of The Area that Nana Glen are this year’s favourites.

“We got off to a good start but they came out after drinks being 4/60 and ended up making 174.

“We struggled a bit I think because we haven’t played much cricket at all this season and blokes were a bit underdone.

“Reuben Carey bowled well early and was hard to play on what was a pretty flat deck.

“Ben Watson bowled really well for them and we just never got going, Nana will be premiership favourites now.

“We need to get a lot better,” said Paff.

Veteran wicketkeeper Steve Meakins made a return to first grade cricket for Diggers and told News Of The Area his team were outplayed.

“(We were) comprehensively outplayed, the boys bowled pretty well, dropped several chances though at key points and were probably chasing 40-50 more runs than we should have been.

“Batting innings never really got going, especially mine,” said Meakins.

 

By David WIGLEY