First Ryan Gurney and Mick Curtale combined to end Orange City’s Royal Hotel Cup hopes and in Wednesday night’s semi-final at Wade Park, Centennials Bulls devastating duo did the same to bring the Lithgow Lightning’s title defence to an end.
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The duo’s stunning performance against the reigning champions was, in many ways, similar to the way they dispatched of the Warriors too.
With a spot in this year’s decider on the line Gurney and Curtale came together early in Centennials’ dig after Josh Toole was dismissed and promptly went ballistic.
Gurney (57) and Curtale (35) added a rapid 72 to lay the foundation for their side’s whopping total of 5-171.
Then, taking the pace off the ball, they combined to take four of Lithgow’s biggest wickets as the Lightning fell 57 short at 114.
“Ryan was pretty unbelievable actually, I think he might’ve had a bit of extra motivation there playing against his old side,” Centennials skipper Andrew Brown said of Gurney, who won last year’s tournament MVP with the Lightning.
“We batted really well in general actually, Mick played second fiddle a little bit to Ryan and it’s not what he usually does. But he got us together after we batted and sort of said how good it was to watch from the other end, which is good.
“It was a good win for us. We probably didn’t expect it to be that big a win.”
Centennials will face the winner of Friday night’s semi-final between Bathurst City Redbacks and CYMS in next week’s decider.
The latter side went through the preliminary stage undefeated and, thanks to the Warriors’ elimination, remains the only team to have never missed the finals since the tournament changed to Twenty20 cricket.
Not that the Bathurst-based Centennials care about that, although Brown did admit his team loves beating Bathurst City in anything.
“We don’t really care who we play but I guess we do know a bit more about Bathurst City,” he said.
“We know most of their players and what they do, whereas we probably only know about a couple of the CYMS guys.”
After Toole (4) fell, Curtale and Gurney motored the score along to 85 before the latter was dimissed, and Curtale fell 20 runs later to make it 3-105.
Aaron Seymour (10), Nick Bird (29) and Dallas Tilley (23 not out) added valuable runs after that, catapulting their side well above 150.
Lithgow skipper Ben Sheehan, the tournament’s leading run-scorer, went nuts at the top of the chase. He blasted 49 and added 56 for the first wicket with Mick Hutchinson (6).
But Curtale (2-22) nabbed Hutchinson and Gurney (2-22) snared Sheehan four runs later, before Toole produced a stunning piece of work to run out Joel Gurney (0) and, just like that, leave Lithgow in dire straits at 3-63.
The defending champions didn’t recover, Andrew Fawbert (12) and Tanvir Singh (10 not out) were the only two bats to pass double figures after that.
“I still don’t think we actually played our best cricket, we dropped Benny Sheehan three or four times in the first five or six overs,” Brown said, sending a potentially ominous warning to his side’s grand final opposition, whichever team that may be.
The victory also reversed round three’s result when Lithgow won a rain-affected match on the back of a Sheehan masterclass, he smashed 53 not out of the Lightning’s 1-80. That was enough after Centennials’ 124 was revised.
The Royal Hotel Cup final is scheduled for Friday, March 2 at 6.30pm.
The Carl Sharpe Medal for player of the tournament will also be presented that night.