A spectacular hat-trick from Gunnedah’s Will Hicks wasn’t quite enough for the home side in last Saturday’s second grade cricket fixture at Wolseley Park, as South Tamworth won by three wickets.
Four wickets in five balls – including three in successive balls – left Souths 6-38 in reply to Gunnedah’s total of 111 before the winning chance slipped through Gunnedah’s fingers.
Gunnedah remained equal-last on the seven-team ladder, while Souths stayed fourth.
After winning the toss, the hosts stumbled to 2-6 after three overs before Brad Swain and Bailey Lennox staged a recovery with a 62-run partnership.
The eighth over contained nine runs to Lennox, one to Swain and four from wides before the following over included back-to-back sixes to Swain as well as a leg bye.
Ten runs in the tenth over included two fours to Lennox, but a turning point occurred from the first ball of the 14th over when Swain was needlessly run out.
Lennox departed in the 17th over, and then the 21st over was a double-wicket maiden which left the hosts 6-90.
Twelve runs were added for the seventh wicket before the final four wickets fell for just nine runs. Gunnedah not only failed to capitalise on the third wicket partnership, but also fell 51 balls short of batting out its allotted 40 overs.
Harry Hickey was the pick of the bowlers with 4-17 from 5.3 overs while Dinesh Goyal had sensational figures of 2-4 from six overs.
Souths lost a wicket in the third over of the run chase when a miscued stroke lobbed to point, but the over also contained several wides.
Jon Stone found the boundary twice in the sixth over, before Souths astonishingly plunged from 1-37 to 5-37 and then 6-38.
Hicks penetrated Logan Pike’s defence and bowled him from the final ball of the 11th over, and then Braith Winsor rattled Stone’s stumps with the very next delivery.
The first ball of Hicks’s next over was almost a carbon copy of his previous delivery, with Goyal bowled as he played defensively.
Facing a hat-trick ball, Shehbaz Ahmed bizarrely swung across the line and had his middle-stump knocked back, sparking ecstasy among the home side.
The following delivery was a wide, and then Daniel Bryant played across the line at the next ball which uprooted his middle-stump.
The drama wasn’t over, as the ensuing delivery was a no-ball which resulted in a subsequent free hit for Mitch Forrester who slammed three runs.
Hicks bowled another wide, before two dot balls included an unsuccessful appeal for lbw.
Hicks’s next over cost 10 runs including another no-ball and a wide, and then he opted to leave the field. He didn’t bowl again, having taken 4-19 from three overs.
With the score 6-60, Richard Avendano’s first delivery resulted in a rejected appeal for caught-and-bowled, before the next delivery yielded two runs from a dropped catch at long-on.
Curtis Parkinson continued to live a charmed life, as he drove Avendano’s third delivery to the left of the bowler who narrowly missed a tough return catch.
Avendano struck in his next over when Parkinson drove a catch into the covers, leaving Souths 7-70.
Another 13 runs were added before the drinks break, leaving Souths needing 29 runs from the remaining 20 overs while Gunnedah needed three wickets.
Souths polished off the required runs in 7.2 overs without the loss of any more wickets, with Gunnedah failing to grasp a run-out chance and a catching opportunity.
Gunnedah faces the second-placed Old Boys at Kitchener Park this Saturday.
South Tamworth 7-113 (Mitch Forrester 30 not out; Will Hicks 4-19) defeated Gunnedah 111 (Brad Swain 35, Bailey Lennox 32; Harry Hickey 4-17, Dinesh Goyal 2-4) by three wickets.
