Article: Sarah Lowe

The A grade had their first home game for the year. It was great to welcome Courtney Neale and Emmerson Filsell back from state duties.

After losing the toss and bowling first, we had Sturt precariously placed at the end of the power play at 3/32. A key partnership then followed before Neale made the breakthrough which saw a steady flow of wickets to have Sturt bowled out for 166 in the 39th over. Wickets were shared with Filsell 3, Eliza Doddridge 3, Shae Daly 2, Zanzibar Menzies 1 and 1.

The chase started with a mixup between the wickets that led to an early wicket. At the end of the power play we had recovered to be well placed at 1/52. The quick wickets of Doddridge (35), Sarah Lowe (25) and Stokell (1) then saw the game in the balance. In her second game Abby Collihole stepped up to the plate and delivered a composed 34 from 57 in partnership with Neale (31). Another 3 wicket collapse kept Sturt in it before Daly (14*) and Tash MacBean (11*) saw it home. The team are 4 from 4 heading in to the bye!

B grade lost the toss and was put into bowl first. Straight off the bat Sturt was looking to hit big. First ball of the game and it was a drop catch but the energy was very high in the field. There was a few missed opportunities for wickets but everyone kept pushing and backing each other up. Izzy Durant leading the way up with 4 wickets. Some highlights included Lucy breaking a bail going for a run out and Maddie getting her first catch in B grade. For the batting we lost some crucial wickets that put us in a tight position. Martha held her own and made some small partnerships with Amity and Izzy. In the end we had 30 runs to get in two overs. Niamh and Martha stayed out there and never gave up. Both looking for singles and pushing for runs. Couldn’t get the runs but it was a bloody good effort from the girls.

The C Grade unfortunately lost the toss at the beginning with Port Adelaide electing to bowl first, with this, we warmed up to bat with Ava and Macy opening the batting. Both Ava and Macy were able to bat out the first 5 over before an unfortunate bit of a batting collapse. Although there was a collapse it was slow and we were able to bat out the rest of the innings with a couple wickets in the shed. At the end of the innings we were 8/67. Bring a few runs short we knew scored we had a challenge ahead of ourselves in defending our total. The innings with some great energy, unfortunately due to the wind there was a few more extras than usual but some pretty consistent bowling efforts from the girls. Unfortunately we left a couple catches out on the field with a few missed catch opportunities. Although the outcome was not looking the best the girls were able to fight until the end collecting quite a few good wickets before Port Adelaide unfortunately caught up to reached the total in the 12th over

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