Centennials Bulls go down to Bathurst City on final ball of innings

Having comfortably accounted for Bathurst City by seven wickets only a matter of hours earlier in Royal Hotel Cup action Bulls would have been feeling confident of going back-to-back.

Joel Gurney (45), Percy Raveneau (23) and Blake Aubin (20) gave Centennials a great chance of making that happen thanks to their contributions with the bat, taking their side to a total of 118 at the Sportsground.

Bulls had Redbacks on the back foot until a 33-run stand over the seventh and eighth wickets brought the match down to the wire.

Chris Redding had the tough task of bowling the final over with Redbacks needing eight for victory.

He gave away just three runs off his first four deliveries before a boundary off the edge of Jacob Pepper’s bat levelled the scores.

A single on the final ball gave Bathurst City the win.

Kurt Toole (2-14), Ryan Gurney (2-16) and Mick Hutchinson (1-15) were all economical and on target with the ball.

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“Joel batted well and Blake Aubin knocked the ball around well with him so to get to 118 from where we started was good,” Centennials captain Andrew Brown said.

“We backed our bowlers to defend it. We had heaps of different options.

“It wasn’t typical pitch at the Sportsground. It was still low but kind of holding up at the start. We started off well with the ball and Hutch bowled really well over the middle over where we dried the runs up.

“We were definitely in the game and there weren’t many boundaries happening.”

Bulls then suffered a bigger margin of defeat in their game later in the day against St Pat’s Old Boys.

Cetennials fell 46 runs short of the Saints total of 157. Joel Gurney again led the way for Bulls with his score of 49.