THE Seymour District Cricket Association (SDCA) is officially on notice: Tallarook has no intention of loosening its grip on the competition.
The opening round of the SDCA season saw three A/B grade doubleheaders, headlined by a rematch between last season’s A grade grand finalists Tallarook and Seymour at Chittick Park on Saturday.
Missing several of their premiership players from last season, the reigning premiers certainly showed their credentials in dismantling a quality opponent.
The Rook lost the toss and immediately rolled out this year’s new recruit Jac Smith-Williams.
Seymour jagged a couple of early wickets, including Cam Bassett’s huge scalp of Lachlan Watts for a duck, but Smith-Williams was flying.
He smashed 113 from just 58 balls with 11 fours and six sixes to help his side to 4/215 from 20 overs and was handily assisted by Leigh Irving’s 54.
The pick of the bowlers for Seymour was Hugh Smith who took 2/18 off three overs.
In the run chase, the Maroons never got going.
Ben Trezise was tight as always, jagging two wickets for just 18 runs.
Seymour ultimately fell 130 runs short, unable to push its rivals in the same way they did in the grand final last year.
Elsewhere, Puckapunyal couldn’t chase down Yea despite a stifling spell from Ben Hughes (2/6 off four overs), while Pyalong fell 32 runs short against Alexandra at home.
Earlier in the day, Tallarook and Puckapunyal landed first round victories in B grade against Seymour and Yea respectively.
Matt Whitfield (42*) and Finn Melville (41) did the business with the bat for Tallarook before Dale Short cleaned up the Seymour batters to finish with figures of 4/14 in a 50-run victory.
Tight bowling from Pucka’s whole team helped them to a win, restricting Yea to 75 after setting them a target of 120.
In the other two B grade games, Pyalong were comfortably beaten by Alexandra by seven wickets and the Seymour 59ers were no match for Avenel, going down by 45 runs.
