LONGFORD and Hadspen will meet in what promises to be a battle between two star Sri Lankans.

Chieftain Thanuka Dabare has set the TCL alight with three 100s and three 50s in 12 games, while Dilan Sandagirigoda is fresh off five wickets against Perth. 

Country Tigers captain-coach Josh Adams backed his bowling attack to minimise Dabare’s influence and shoot for a three-game buffer on their closest rival. 

“He must be some kind of player to have scored the runs he has, I’m looking forward to having a look at him,” Adams said.

“It should be a cracking game of cricket with the two in-form teams of the comp shaping off in the last game before Christmas.”

Kieran Davey will replace Andy Bassett for Longford.

Bottom-placed LEGANA will look to be more ruthless in a home clash with ACL.

Coach Geoff Stick and Josh Allen will miss, but the Durhams regain Matty Wells, Michael Dunn and Don Howarth.

“We’ve gotten into a bad habit of not winning games we’re in a position to win, so we’ll be trying to address having a bit more of a killer instinct,” Stick said. 

A solid win over Cressy got the Bluebacks’ season back on track last round and will form captain-coach John Kedey’s blueprint for the remainder of the season. 

“For the first time basically we took 10 wickets in a game bowling second ... now we’ve got to really try and keep that consistency,” Kedey said.

“Hopefully if we can keep scoring over 200 runs and taking 10 wickets we’ll be winning a lot of games, so that’s our goal now.”

Ashley Batty will replace last week’s star Michael Pickard (university graduation). 

Damian Whybrow’s CRESSY will host Perth with the chance to pull a game back on its fourth-placed rival. 

Both sides were comfortably beaten last week despite good scores from Demon John Hayes (44) and Bulldog Danny Bennett (62). 

“I suppose our last three weeks have been pretty ordinary to be honest, three losses in a row isn’t good and it’s something we didn’t experience last year,” Whybrow said.

“Perth have been a pretty handy side this year so it’s a big game.”

Demons coach Ross Tulich is likely to have two forced changes from the XI that lost to Longford. 

“Both teams are matched really well so I just expect a bit better performance from last week, I hope we show a lot better effort,” Tulich said. 

BEAUTY POINT bowled well in its win over Legana last week but has been tasked by Rob Crane to improve its batting against 4-2 Trevallyn. 

“It’s alright to get 20-odds but you’ve got to turn them into 50s or 100s,” Crane said. 

Saturday, 11am