First Grade Final Preview

Grand Final Preview

It all comes down to this! After two cracking semi finals over the weekend, the Sunshine Coast Scorchers and Northern Suburbs Vikings will face off across the next two weekends. Only one team will take home the Cam Battersby Cup.
 

Sunshine Coast
Captain: Nick Selman
Coach: Peter Dein
Ladder Position | 2^nd
Runs Scored | 1749
Wickets Lost | 71
Runs against | 1955
Wickets Taken | 92

The Sunshine Coast have been consistent performers all season, losing only one red ball match. Their strength lies in their bowling unit which conceded the third least amount of runs across the competition. They finished with five two day wins, including one outright, which was the second most in the competition.

Batting
With a significant amount of weather around this summer, the Scorchers batters haven’t had an easy time on Ken Emery Oval. At the top of the order, Zac Willox (293 @ 48.83) leads their run scorers and led their unit to a semi final win. The Scorchers biggest weakness has also been their biggest strength with the bat. They haven’t had one player dominate all year, rather they’ve had a number of players consistently chip in to either guide them home or give their bowlers a target to defend.

Nick Fletcher (285 @ 40.71), Kiran Carlson (267 @44.5), Cody Pyne (233 @ 25.89), Tom Engelbrecht (229 @ 25.44) and Harry Clark-Burnham (215 @ 19.55) have each had an important innings at some stage of the season to either help a win or hang onto a draw. Carlson is their only batter to score a red ball hundred this season, which came in a win over Uni.

Bowling
Scorchers seamer Chad Soper has just about been the player of the competition this season. Soper might not have the pace of some of the competitions big names, but he certainly has the skills. His 42 @ 13.86 leads all players by 12 wickets and is remarkable when you consider only 6 players took more than 20 wickets this two day season.

Soper has been supported by Zac Murray (24 @ 13.79) and Nick Fletcher (16 @ 15.94), who have each found great form heading into the final. Interestingly, the Scorchers don’t feature a front-line spinner. It didn’t matter for them on the weekend against Ipswich as their seamers bowled every over and took all 20 wickets.


X Factor
Nick Fletcher is the player to watch with bat and ball over the next two weekends. His added pace compliments Soper and Murray perfectly, and he has a real presence when batting. Expect Fletcher to be in the thick of the action right throughout the contest.



Norths
Captain: Sam Neale
Coach: Ash Holznagel
Ladder Position | 4^th 
Runs Scored | 1617
Wickets Lost | 72
Runs against | 2443
Wickets Taken | 109

Reigning premiers Norths have scored the least amount of runs across the entire competition, but they’ve also taken 11 more wickets than any other side and 25 more than the overall average. Only four matches have been won outright all season and Norths won two of them. Interestingly, they only won one red ball game all season on first innings.

Batting
There’s no other way to say this; Norths batting hasn’t been good this season. The reigning premiers only have six players who have surpassed 100 runs across two day cricket. Blake Maher (266 @ 38) leads Norths run getters, followed by Connor Carroll (261 @ 32.63), Alex Procopis (209 @ 29.86) and Rav Srivastava (185 @ 21.13). Rav Srivastava will be full of confidence as he comes into the grand final with a final round half century against Wests and a match winning 45* in the semi final.

Despite not dominating with the bat, Norths have managed to scrap and fight their way into finals. Their batting profile has very closely mirrored the Scorchers in how they haven’t been reliant on big scores to win.

Bowling
Sam Neale (30 @ 14.17) is the competitions second leading wicket taker behind Chad Soper. The two best bowlers leading their sides to a grand final, coincidence? Likely not.

Left arm leggie Ryan Walker (16 @ 36.81) has battled tough conditions for spinners all summer yet managed to finish among the competitions top performers. He has a huge role to play as the game’s only front-line spinner.

Walker and Blake Maher (17 @ 19.18) have been the main stars beside Neale all season. Watch out for youngsters Alex Procopis and Marcus Bean. Procopis is one of the country’s top junior talents, while the 6 foot 11 Bean broke through to the Big Bash this year and is a gamebreaker.


X Factor
A long time Scorcher, Blake Maher will be looking to perform against his old side. Maher is one of the few players in the competition who can completely turn a match in just a session with either bat or ball. He looked ominous on the weekend against Toombul and he will no doubt be wanting to make his presence known over the next two weekends.

Fun fact: The last time the Scorchers played in a two day grand final was 2005/6, which remains their only premiership in the format. That year they were captained by Ash Holznagel who is now the Norths 1^st Grade Coach.

This game shapes up to be an absolute cracker. Will Norths’ finals experience get them over the line, or will the Scorchers hunger to reignite their premiership flame see them victorious?

Make sure to come to Allan Border Field or watch it as a Kayo Freebie across the next two weekends!