Cricket North’s continual dominance in the women’s game over its traditional archrivals has ended on the back of abysmal control with the ball on Sunday.
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The region’s best bowlers delivered an insurmountable 54 wides and seven no-balls, handing North West batters more than 10 extra overs to chase down a modest target in the 40-over fixture.
The annual match played under the full women’s international rules was a change from their respective club competitions every weekend.
The far stricter umpiring interpretations – especially on legside wides – halted any lingering chance of a North victory at the NTCA Ground.
North West bowlers gave up 16 wides and extra balls too on the extraordinary day.
Experienced North coach Darren Simmonds was a matter of fact speaking about the three-wicket defeat.
“It’s a bit hard when you bowl an extra 60 deliveries to them to win,” he said.
“I’ll just say that our girls struggled to adapt to the conditions today.”
The bowling efforts were made hard on the hottest day of January in Launceston.
But Simmonds refused to make excuses for the wayward performance – nor the change of playing conditions that many of the side were exposed to for the first time.
“Anything that was down legside was a wide,” he said.
“In saying that, some of our wides were wide – not just down the legside – and we just didn’t have a good day with the ball.
“It’s as simple as that.
“We just didn’t execute and we just had a bad day.
“That’s what it came down to at the end of the day.”
North’s problems started with the bat, losing a flow of early wickets steadily towards a battling 6-62.
Rhianne Hack and Sophie Parkin went into recovery mode to put on 40 invaluable runs for the seventh wicket.
But the home side had to be content in the end with a near-three-an-over 9-118.
“We ended up batting out our overs, which was okay – something that we wanted to do,” Simmonds said.
“To be honest, we were still a few short of where we wanted to be. We thought we gave ourselves nothing to bowl to. But if we bowled and fielded well, we thought we’d still be in the game.”
North West pushed out to nearly four an over on the back of mass number of sundries, but soon after suffered a middle-order collapse.
When Lisa Battle picked up her second scalp, the visitors fell to 6-87 but still only required 32 runs off 84 balls.
North West remained far more composed than its North counterparts to reach the target in the 34th over.
Simmonds paid special tribute young spinner Chelsea Ryan for her tight lines without taking a wicket.
“But the North West team batted and bowled very well and I have to say credit to them for that,” he said.
It was their first loss in the intrastate game for a number of years, Simmonds said.