Bellbridge has hit the mid-season break in strong form after defeating Footscray Angliss in the Victorian Turf Cricket Association division 4 season on Saturday.
After winning the toss and bowling the Bears were set just 164 for victory in 40 overs.
“It was a really good decision [to bowl first]. I was pretty happy with it,” skipper Dillon Hinge said.
“Winning the toss and bowling puts a bit of pressure on the batsman to do the run chase but our bowlers really set the tone, I think their 170 or so was about 20 short.”
With the bat the Bears were solid, getting away to a nice start, making just shy of 50 without loss.
“Our openers got us off to a good start which relieved some pressure and through the middle order Daniel Spencer was terrific and our young opener Nirav [Dhaliwal] made a 50 again and continued on with his good form from the start of the season,” Hinge said.
While Spencer made an unbeaten 54, Dhaliwal top scored for the Bears with 56. Dhaliwal has had a great start to the season with this half century getting him to 610 runs from his 19 matches across all competitions at an average of 43.57.
Bellbridge heads into the break at equal top of the division 4 ladder, with four wins and three loses.
“I said to the team after the game that it’s the first time in a while that we’ve gone in [to the mid-season break] with a positive win-loss ratio,” Hinge said.
“We’re just playing the right brand of cricket and want to keep that momentum going into Christmas.
“We’ve got a few injuries and we’ve got a few players coming back just after Christmas so looking after Christmas is when we hopefully hit our straps which hopefully leads into a finals series for us.
“At the start of the season we set ourselves to play finals and we said we would reassess at Christmas and looking at it now I’ve still got our pass mark as playing finals this year.
“Hopefully we can go deeper than just playing finals and bring the club some success that they are really striving for.”
