Bushies and Tilpa through to grand final

Bushies will face Tilpa in the Twenty20 Cricket grand final on Friday night.

They have been the best teams all season having finished first and second respectively on the competition table.

Bushies won their grand final spot after defeating CSA by 17 runs in Friday night’s semi final. CSA had won the toss and elected to bowl first on a damp wicket and they got an early break through dismissing Bushies opener Alec Fraser (0) with the score on two.

Jade Buckman and Stephen Nicholson then shared in a 54 runs partnership before Nicholson was dismissed for 37.

This then set off a middle order collapse as Bushies loss four wickets for 14 runs to be 5/70 in the 13th over.

Matt Nicholson joined Buckman at the crease and the pair got Bushies back on track adding 76 runs in the final seven overs to take Bushies to 5/146 from their 20 overs.

Buckman finished on 54 not out and Nicholson was 36 not out.

Tom McKenna and Tarun Bheemireddy took two wickets each for CSA.

In reply, CSA needed just slightly more than seven runs per over to reach the required target.

That was quickly down to just under six runs per over after CSA’s openers scored 22 runs off the first over, then took 30 off the next three overs to be 1/52 from the opening four overs.

But then with the loss of the wickets of Tom McKenna, Tarun Bheemireddy and Tadgh Waugh, Bushies were back in the game.

David Watson came to the crease and it looked as though he was going guide CSA to victory.

He was however dismissed in the 18th over for a well-made 47 runs and CSA’s run ended.

Needing 21 runs off the last over, CSA could only manage four runs and fell short of the total.

Tom Good, Travis Buckman and Alec Fraser took two wickets each for Bushies.

In the second semi final played on Saturday, Tilpa secured a grand final spot with a tense nine run victory over Wyatt’s Whackers.

Tilpa batted first and made 5/143 runs from their 20 overs. Josh Brown was the mainstay of the innings making 53 runs. He was supported by Mitch Holt (29) and Pat Sullivan (25).

In reply, Wyatt’s Whackers fell nine runs short of the required total scoring 8/134 from their 20 overs.

Pat Harris (42) and Ben Simon (38) top scored for Wyatt’s Whackers.