An outside edge from Orange tailender Scott Kennedy gave his side a thrilling one wicket victory over Bathurst in their Presidents Cup clash at the Sportsground on Sunday.

A strong fourth wicket partnership between Josh Doherty (60) and Matt Corben (34) looked certain to take Orange to Bathurst’s total of 156 until a late five-wicket collapse from the away side lead to a nail biting finish.

Bathurst’s Mick Waldren had claimed the scalps of Hugh Le Lievre and Daryl Kennewell with back-to-back balls, getting the hosts within one wicket of victory.

On the start of his following over Waldren thought he had the match won on his hat trick ball with an impassioned LBW appeal. It was waived away.

Kennedy took a swing and a miss on the second ball of the over but made enough contact on the third ball to beat wicketkeeper Imran Qureshi and give his team a memorable win.

Waldren finished with the best figures of the match with 4-23 while Doherty was the top scoring batsman from either side.

Bathurst were left to regret a subpar performance with the bat.

Wayne and Dave Sellers (53 and 26 respectively) accounted for over half of the home side’s runs after the top order failed to build any significant partnerships.

Fletcher Rose was the best of the Orange bowlers with 3-44.

“We didn’t quite put enough on the board. We fought hard to get to the score that we did with a couple of late contributions from Wayne and Dave Sellers. The tailenders stuck around with them, which got us to a score that we could try and defend,” Bathurst captain Josh Toole said.

“We could have rolled over and given up but we fought right to the end with some good spells from Michael Waldren and Ben Parsons – a couple of the best spells I’ve seen for a while.”

Orange captain Kennewell said it was a confidence-building victory for his men.

“It was a good win for the boys, having a few out and needing a few ring-ins, but everyone stuck in, especially in the field for those first 17 overs,” he said.

“We probably lost a few more wickets than we wanted to there chasing those last 20 runs but 9-157, we’ll take the win.

“It’s always good to build those combinations at the start and build an innings. We went out there thinking ‘they got 156, we want to make our total 190, because we thought it was a 190 pitch and that’s what we were batting towards’.”