IT will be a battle of the unpredictable stars on Saturday when Wauchope RSL clash with Macquarie Hotel at Andrews Park.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The round-four encounter sees a repeat of the round one clash where Macquarie snuck home by a wicket.
On that occasion James Terrett was the star, but this weekend he’ll be missing whereas RSL welcome back Jason Blythe into the top order.
He’ll slot in at four to cover for the loss of captain Matt Day who will be on the Central Coast.
Day said Blythe would look to pick up where he left off when he was dismissed just shy of a half century in round one.
“He was quite disappointed to get out when he did in the first round,” he said.
“It’s great to have him back; he’s a huge in for us and is a little bit unpredictable.”
Macquarie have their own unpredictability at the top of the order in Chris Cole and Day knows he’ll be one of the key early wickets.
“Coley is a huge danger man for them,” he said.
Macquarie captain Josh Hyde backed up Day’s comments.
“A lot of our play relies on Coley and he’s been in good form the last couple of weeks,” he said.
“He’s got all the shots; he plays the reverse sweep and he played the ramp in the rep game last weekend.”
Hyde said Cole had the ability to take the game away from their opponents in as little as five overs.
“He’s game enough to take the attack to the bowlers if they’re just a little bit off,” he said.
Macquarie will also be without Ricky Arnell and Adrian Sippel, but they welcome back Ethan Hyde who also missed the round one match.
Liam Coelho also returns after completing his HSC.
Meanwhile, Port Pirates have had two weeks to stew on their 12-run loss to Wauchope.
They’ll clash with Port City Leagues Magpies at Oxley Oval and captain Paul Stait was expecting Leagues to be a lot better.
He looked at Leagues’ captain Kyle Bray as the key man.
“He’s been playing plenty of representative cricket, he’s been hitting them alright and he bats and bowls,” Stait said.
Ryan McMahon and Rod Morton are out while Simon Granfield will return.
He again looked to his top order to lay the foundation.
“Shane Williams has had a few low scores so I’ll be looking at him to get some decent runs at the top,” the captain said.
Leagues captain Kyle Bray was confident of a good showing from his side.
Tim Harris, Nick Maxwell and Jason Herdegen return.
“Tim’s a big inclusion for us; he got a duck last time so hopefully he scores a few runs,” he said.
“We usually play pretty well at Oxley so hopefully that continues on Saturday.”