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The Dubbo curse lives on for the Bathurst district side after they were bested by seven wickets in their Western Zone Premier League match at the Sportsground yesterday.
For two-thirds of the match the hosts were in the contest up to their ears, but a perfectly crafted 97 from Dubbo captain Mitch Bower was the fulcrum of a successful run-chase after his side restricted Bathurst to 185 all-out.
He and Asher Robbins (57 not out) combined for a massive 161-run stand for the third wicket that destroyed any chance of a Bathurst win.
In doing so, he provided a lesson to the opposition about patience and the value of picking the right time to accelerate.
“After 22 overs when we came off for drinks we were only 2-50 and I spoke to Asher when we went back out about trying to push things a bit and trying to get things moving,” Bower said.
“We got into a good position in that middle session and batting started to get a bit easier, we gutsed it out in the first session and then capitalised and got in front in the game. We had to factor in the possibility of rain and run rates.
“The Bathurst openers bowled exceptionally, Aaron Seymour at one stage bowled me about 30 balls in a row that I had to block straight back down the wicket, but I knew that the longer I was there, the easier it would get.”
Despite heavy rain on Saturday the pitch was relatively unaffected – aside from the run-up areas, which caused a slight delay at the start of the match.
Bathurst captain Daniel Casey won the toss and elected to bat and even with the early loss of Henry Shoemark (five) they were in good positions at various stages of the innings.
A mix-up between Ben Orme and Joey Coughlan (11) saw the latter run-out, while Orme was just starting to warm up and took 18 off one over before falling for 27.
The key batsman for Bathurst was always likely to be Jameel Qureshi and he showed his class once more in a well-paced display.
Callum Hotham (six) was the fourth man to fall but it brought Qureshi and Josh Toole together and they thrived during a 55-run stand that took the home team to 4-129.
James O’Brien intervened to get rid of Toole for 26 and Casey followed, removed by young leg-spinner Marty Jeffrey for one.
Aaron Seymour (four) and Ryan Peacock (nine) also departed and when Qureshi was well caught by Ben Strachan off his own bowling for 61, Bathurst were looking at a sub-par score at 9-166.
Matt Stephen struck a few hefty blows in a rapid 16 that got his side to 185 all-out.
Strachan (4-23) and Jeffrey (2-34) were the pick of the Dubbo bowlers.
In-form run machine Jordan Moran had to leave the match early and as a consequence came out for a brief 20-minute session before lunch with big hitting in mind and he looked in good nick for 14 before being caught off Seymour.
The opening bowler produced a peach to remove Wayne Dunlop without scoring and at 2-16 the visitors were behind in the game at the main interval.
Seymour continued to tie down one end afterwards and forced Robbins and Bower to take their time.
He and Stephen bowled unchanged through their 10 overs, and even without further wickets, the fact that Dubbo were only scoring at a tick above two runs an over meant the pressure was on.
Some cheap overs from Peacock and Qureshi tightened the screws further, and something had to give.
It was Bathurst who blinked first.
They dropped Robbins a couple of times and it was all the extra latitude Dubbo needed.
Bower found the boundary 10 times and cleared it on four more occasions, including one towering effort off Matt Lawson which nearly landed in Havannah Street.
Lawson had the unflattering figures of 0-36 off three overs.
Seymour was easily the pick of the bowlers with 2-17 from his 10, as Dubbo went at nearly seven runs an over in scoring their last 130 runs.
“I don’t think I had a great day as captain, in hindsight I probably wouldn’t have batted first, but at the time I thought rain might be an issue so I thought about having runs on the board,” Casey said.
“The good thing is that it is a round robin competition, it doesn’t knock us out. Now we have to go and regroup and think about what we have to do against Parkes in our next match.
“We have to be converting our starts and learn from the way Dubbo went about things.”