A Man of the Match performance by Jed Noonan led his Ruthless Toothless team to a thrilling two wicket victory over Bushies in the Twenty20 cricket grand final on Fri-day night.
Noonan ended the match with bowling fig-ures of 4/4 off three overs and he hit 41 runs off 34 balls including 4 sixers and remained not out.
Bushies won the toss and elected to bat first.
Their innings started in disastrous fashion as Noonan knocked over Bushies’ top four bats-men, with Tom McKenna dismissed for 0, Alec Fraser (2), Jade Buckman (0) and Ste-phen Nicholson (2).
With the score at 4/6, Tadgh Waugh and Mark Fraser came together at the crease and were starting to steady the innings before Waugh had to retire on 12 not out after being hit in the head.
Fraser was then joined by Adam Hill at the crease.
When Fraser was dismissed for 20 runs and Hill went for 17, Bushies had taken their score along to 6/62 but then they lost their last four wickets for just five runs to be all out for 67 runs in the 16th over.
Chasing only 68 runs for victory, it should have been an easy assignment for Toothless, but maybe they were a little complacent and took it too easy.
Toothless made a decent start losing Tim Hillam (11) with score on 13 but then ran into trouble when they lost their next seven wick-ets for 27 runs.
Ben Griffiths (1), Matt Shephard (2), Tristen Everett (0), David Watson (2), Ryan Urquhart (3), Paddy Harris (1) and Chris Deighton (0) were all dismissed cheaply.
Needing a further 28 runs for victory and with two wickets in hand, Jed Noonan (41 not out) and Marty Turton (2 no) held their nerve to get Toothless home
