After a lengthy summer, Nagambie Cricket Club’s next crop of stars is ready to battle for glory in this weekend’s Cricket Shepparton under-14B grand final.
The junior Lakers will take on Karramomus on Sunday at Nagambie Recreation Reserve following their victory at the weekend over Notre Dame-St Brendan’s.
Nagambie posted 8-130 after it was sent in to bat first by the Tigers.
Flynn Bush had a day out with impressive figures of 3-8, which complemented his earlier knock of 29 not out.
Ash Morris was clinical with the ball and claimed 3-7 as Nagambie restricted the visitors to 63 runs.
Sunday’s grand final will begin at 10.30am.
Meanwhile, the Lakers’ A-grade outfit suffered a deflating loss to Mooroopna at the weekend.
Mooroopna locked in a home final for the upcoming Cricket Shepparton Haisman Shield finals series following the thrilling two-wicket victory on Saturday.
A spirited half-century with the bat from Luke Nolan (64 runs) wasn’t enough to get the Lakers over the line as Mooroopna chased down the target of 165 with four overs to spare.
Ethan Anderson worked his way back into form with his first half-century of the season, while playing coach Luke Zanchetta (4-23) and Jack Gaskill (3-23) were the two standouts with the ball in another all-round team performance from Mooroopna.
Saturday’s round 13 defeat makes life tricky for Nagambie as it hunts a spot in the finals, with a victory, a bonus point and other results needing to go its way to ensure it makes it out of the regular season.
However, Mooroopna’s fate in finals is already sealed.
Zanchetta’s outfit, the two-time reigning premier, has moved into top spot on the ladder on the eve of finals action.
“It was a really pleasing win. I think Nagambie showed that they’re really unlucky to be missing out on finals,” Zanchetta said.
“They’ve got some classy players, obviously both the Nolan boys, and they put on quite a competitive total ... once again it was another all-round bowling, batting and fielding performance from us.
“That guarantees us a home final, no matter what happens next week, which is massive.”