THEY showed fight with the ball, but City Colts skipper Dan Casey admitted his side's lack of Twenty20 experience told when it came to Friday night's must-win Royal Hotel Cup match.
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It saw Colts suffer a 40-run loss to Centrals and with it went their hopes of booking a spot in the finals.
While some members of the Colts side had previous Royal Hotel Cup experience for other clubs, this season saw them joining the Orange District Cricket Association competition for for the first time.
Casey felt that was a factor.
"We are just a bit off the pace with that Twenty20 stuff, we haven't played a lot of Twenty20 as a team and I think it's definitely shown," he said.
Centrals won the toss on Friday night and opting to bat first, made a good start to their innings.
Led by Max Powell (37 off 32), they capitalised on the power play before Colts managed to stem the flow of runs. At one stage the Bathurst outfit took three wickets in one over, two of them via run-outs.
In the end Central were all out for 135, eight ball shorts of their 50 overs. After conceding 14 runs off his first over, Casey did well to finish with 3-24 off his four, while Wayne Sellers chipped in with 2-18.
"We were mainly happy with it because they got away to a really good start, we didn't bowl well at all, but we had a good fight back with the ball and got quite a few wickets in that middle period, a few run outs," Casey said.
"That definitely put us right back in the game ... we were happy with that, especially after the start that we had."
It was a target Colts felt confident of chasing, but spinner Edward Dodds (1-9 off four) and quick Fletcher Rose (1-14 off four) tied the visitors down in the power play.
With the required run-rate ticking up, the pressure increased and wickets fell, Colts slipping to 3-26 and then 5-44.
While Craig Berry (25 off 27) and Casey (31 off 29) tried to switch momentum, Colts finished well short of the required total at 8-95.
"With the bat we just really struggled. They opened with a spinner, so spin from one end and then that Rose is a pretty good bowler, so it was hard to get going," Casey said.
"In those first six overs when the field is back, you've really got to try and capitalise on that, but in saying that, you can't throw your wicket away either.
"Don't get me wrong, we were disappointed we couldn't chase that total, but there were things like we did well with the ball to peg it back, we were a little bit off to begin with and they were scoring 10 an over for the first seven overs."
