City Colts account for Centrals by 74 runs to continue perfect start to Bonnor Cup season

Colts comfortably accounted for Centrals by 74 runs at Wade Park to go two from two to start the Twenty20 competition and put themselves within reach of a semi-finals spot.

Dan Casey (50 from 38 deliveries), Russ Gardner (35 not out from 32) and Josh Toole (30 from 24) led the way for Colts after they were sent in to bat by Centrals.

Colts Bonnor Cup skipper Dave Henderson had talked about how important the inclusion of Casey and Gardner would be for the team in the lead up to the game and they delivered the biggest share of runs for the club.

The match brought together the two clubs at the bottom of the BOIDC ladder, each desperate for some good news to come their way in an challenging season.

Colts were on the money from the outset with quick runs and seven boundaries between openers Mazrahul Bhuian (24) and Henry Shoemark (14).

Casey, Gardner and Toole kept the run rate well above a run a ball thanks to their efforts.

Darryl Kennewell (2-29) was the leading Centrals bowler.

The Centrals chase never truly had momentum, as they made their way to 8-61, and it was only thanks to late efforts from Kurt Gander (19) and Matt Burgess (17 not out) that they got near triple figures.

Mark Sheather (3-19) led the way with the ball while Toole (2-11) and David Rogerson (2-23) picked up multiple wickets each.

Gardner said it's great to see the team's T20 campaign giving the club something to smile about.

"It's great to see the team performing so well in the Bonnor Cup competition, and we had a chat about trying to translate those results into our regular Saturday comp," he said.

"I think the key to our win was those partnerships. Everyone batted sensibly. That helped get us to our total, which turned out to be a winning total.

"It was actually hard to hit boundaries on that track for some reason. There was variable bounce and they set good fields so we hard to work hard for ours runs and run hard between the wickets.

"Scoreboard pressure got to them a bit. The run rate pressure started to build a lot and we used that to our advantage."

ORC also picked up a victory in Sunday's earlier game at Wade Park, where they chased down Orange CYMS' 104 with three wickets and an over to spare.

Jacob Ryan, Hamish Siegert and Clint Bryant each picked up two wickets for the Tigers while Ben Cant continued his great run of form to top score with 56 in the team's successful pursuit.

Over at Riawena Oval Orange City were able to keep Bathurst City 46 runs short of their total of 164.

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