While it hasn’t been a dream Victorian Turf Cricket Association division 5 season for Jacana, it could be on the way to finishing with a win in its penultimate clash of the year.
After winning the toss and batting against Wyndham Vale, Jacana got off to a shaky start losing its first wicket for just 21 runs. Yet, batting at three, Thanura Gunasekara was the pillar of Jacana’s innings putting on 108 off 131 balls. Steering his side to 7-284 from 67 overs.
Jacana’s skipper Brett Jensen said it was a good day for his side after an inconsistent year.
“It was a good day for us, we’ve obviously not had the season we would have liked,” he said.
“It was probably the strongest side we’ve put on the park all year, we’ve been below strength all season. We’ve probably had 20 guys go through the first XI, which is a lot of players, and it means we’re not getting much stability in our side.”
Gunasekara’s ton puts him at the top of the division’s run scorers, with 455 runs for the season at an average of 45.5. He was then supported late by Sean Pipe who added an unbeaten cameo of 55, with six boundaries and a maximum.
“We’re really happy with him (Gunasekara), he’s played with us for a few years and has a lot of talent,” Jensen said.
“I’ve been telling him all along that this is where he should be in the comp, and that’ll put him to the top run scorer in the comp. He’s probably thrown away a couple of hundreds this year so to finally get the hundred was a great result for him. He works really hard so he really deserves it.
“He (Pipe) has been batting really well this year, he’s had two good innings in a row, he made a 40 last week and he’s backed it up with a 50 this week so he’s been really good.”
After declaring, Jacana got to bowl 10 overs at Wyndham Vale with the declaration paying off, with two wickets collected late in the day’s play.
Wyndham Vale will resume at 2-31 on Saturday.
“It worked out really well for us, we were tossing it up for a few overs, thinking do we keep going,” Jensen said.
“We were doing pretty comfortably, I think we would have pushed above 300 if we kept going, but we thought we might get a couple of wickets. No one likes going in to bat for a short amount of overs at the end, there’s not a lot for them to gain so sometimes it comes off and we got a couple of wickets.”
With just two wins under Jacana’s belt to this point of the season, Jensen said there is work to be done in the off season, but finishing with some strong performances would be a good start.
“We’re looking at doing a little bit of recruiting over the offseason and strengthening up our depth to have a better year next year,” he said.
“We’d love to try and finish off with a couple of wins.”
